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PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


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OUR      ^10FPW*^ 

(j  APR  22  1032  ^ 

Liberal  Movement 

IX    THEOLOGY 


CHIEFLY  AS  SIIOUX  IX  RECOLLECTIOXS  OF   THE 
HISTORY    OF    LXITARIAXISM    IX 

A   CLOSING   COURSE   OF    LECT1  IN    THE 

HARVARD  DIVINITY  SCHOOL 


JOSEPH    HENRY   ALLEN 

Lecturer    i  H:r:\irJ  University 

Honorary  Membhr  ok  thk  (Unitarian)  Supremk  I 

VANIA,    AlTlK.K  N     AND    TlVI  TIAN 

History  id  Vt  ruRiuLo,' 


THIRD    EDITION 

BOSTON 

ROBERTS     BROTHERS 

1S92 


Copyright,  1882, 
By  Joseph  Henry  Allen. 


University  Press: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


PREFATORY    NOTE. 


r  I  HIE  following  correspondence  sufficiently  explains 
the  circumstances  which  have  led  to  the  publi- 
cation of  this  volume  :  — 

Divimiv  s         .  i!       \f.i»  UnrooTr, 

10,  1882. 
Dear  Sir,  —  We,  the  undersigned,  wishing  to  \ 
Lecturer  on  tin-  "liberal  Movement  in  Th- 

delivered   before  t li « -   Divinity  School   of  Harvard    l 

in  ft  more  permanent  form,  eipreni  our  earnest  desire  for  the 

publication  of  the  Mine. 

.   truly  TOUrs, 

II.   Tuice  Collier, 

lOHl   A. 

Charles   I'.   Etui  -f.i.i., 

Committee  for  the  School. 

I  1,   1882- 
My  Dear  Friends,  —  Four  very  kind  letter  givei  me  tin- 
opportunity,  which  I  am  delighted  to  embrace,  of  l'-avi: 

you  a  memento  of  the  four  years  I  have  passed,  most  agreeably, 
in  connection  with  thii  School. 

Trusting  that  you  may  all  haw  the  privilege  of  doing 
share  in  that  noble  and  most  interesting  work,  of  which  I  here 
attempted  to  trace  some  of  the  antecedents  and  condi: 
am,  with  the  sincerest  regard, 

Your  friend, 

J.   II.  Ai  i.kn. 


IV  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

These  circumstances  will  explain,  if  they  do  not 
justify,  a  more  personal  tone  in  these  Lectures  than 
would  belong  to  a  purely  historical  or  critical  review. 
In  fact,  the  value  of  the  volume,  if  it  has  any,  turns 
mainly  on  its  being,  in  good  part,  made  up  of  remi- 
niscences and  personal  testimony.  It  is,  besides,  in 
some  sense  the  final  link  in  a  series,  of  which  u  He- 
brew Men  and  Times  "  makes  the  first,  and  the  third, 
under  the  title  "  The  Middle  Age,"  is  now  in  press. 

I  will  only  add,  that  some  passages  may  perhaps 
be  recognized  as  having  appeared  here  and  there  in 
print.  In  particular,  most  of  the  article  on  Unita- 
rianism  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  "Three  Phases  of 
Modern  Theology "  has  been  included  here ;  and  the 
Lecture  on  "  The  Gospel  of  Liberalism "  is  substan- 
tially the  same  with  the  Address  to  the  Alumni  of 
this  School  delivered  in  1880. 

By  the  kindness  of  Dr.  Hedge  I  am  permitted  to 
add  in  the  form  of  an  Appendix,  with  some  revision 
and  addition  by  his  hand,  his  recent  Memorial  Ad- 
dress on  Bellows  and  Emerson. 


Harvard  Divinity  School, 

Cambridge,  June  10,  1882. 


CONTENTS. 


I.   Antkckdknt.s 

II.  New  England  Uhitabiamism    . 

III.  Chanmni; 

IV.  Firn.KN    Yi.\ 

V.  Theodore  Pabkbi 

VI   A   S.  -ikmii  [0  Thbolooi    .     .     . 
VII.   The   Km  Human 

VIII.  Tin:  <  ."-N.1.  oi  Liberalism  .    . 


1 

— 

90 
114 

n:> 
17G 


AlM'KM'IX  :    Ml'.MOKlAL    Al>I>KKSH    BY     Dll.    HlilMiL: 

Henri  W.  Bellows 

Ralph  Waldo  l  211 


OUR 

LIBERAL  MOVEMENT   IX  THEOLOGY. 


i 

ANTECEDENTS 


TEERE  are  fcw<  any  form  of 

religious  thought  that  .  ••-.     One 

is,  to  see  it  u  a  fixed  type  of  opinion]  the  ut: 
to  see  it  m  a  j>lia<<*.  in  the  development  of  relij 
truth.    One  sees  it  in  : 

in  creed  or  symbol,  ba  Bet  forth  by  its  recognized 
interpreters  ;  the  other  Bees  it  u  <>:. 
ment  that  began  long  before  ti.  record  of 

it,  and  will  continue  BO  long  as  men  think  at  all 
seriously  on  religious  tilings. 

The  former  way  ha-  been  much  more  common.     It 
corresponds  with  the  al  temper  in  which  i 

ious  opinion  1  :i  held,  and  with  that 

aim  at  absolute  truth,  and  the  far.'.  ent  of 

it,  which  men  have  thought  their  highest  duty.  What 
is  naturally  fluent,  and  by  the  v.tv  laws  of  thought 
must  change  continually  M  the  bearings  of  all  our 
knowledge  change,  men  have  continually  endeavored  to 
fix  in  rigid  forms  that  could  not  lie  altered  or  lo^t. 


2  ANTECEDENTS. 

So  we  find  the  history  of  religious  thought  chiefly 
made  up  of  the  recital  of  creeds,  with  the  story  of  the 
controversies  that  have  grown  out  of  them,  or  else 
have  been  reconciled  in  them.  It  is  even  taken  for 
granted  that  every  religious  movement  must  perforce 
express  itself  in  such  a  creed.  To  this  day  the  ques- 
tion is  asked,  "What  do  Unitarians  believe?" — just 
as  if  that  question  were  at  all  relevant,  as  touching 
the  movement  which  the  various  phases  of  Unitarian 
opinion  represent.  Unitarians  themselves,  in  entire 
good  faith,  are  trying  to  this  day  to  find  some  state- 
ment or  form  of  declaration  broad  enough  to  include 
them  all,  and  precise  enough  to  mean  something 
when  it  has  cancelled  all  they  differ  in;  while  in 
equal  good  faith  they  assure  the  world  that  no  one  is 
to  be  held  responsible  for  that  or  any  other  statement 
that  can  be  made. 

Now  it  is  not  quite  satisfactory  to  say,  as  many  do, 
that  Unitarians  simply  guard,  with  more  than  com- 
mon jealousy,  their  right  as  Protestants  to  private 
judgment :  in  other  words,  that  they  are  not  only 
"  Unitarian "  Christians,  but  also  "  Liberal "  Chris- 
tians. This  has  never  been  felt  fairly  to  meet  the 
case.  Inquirers  think  they  have  a  right  to  expect 
more ;  believers  feel  they  have  a  right  to  assume 
more.  And  many  attempts  have  been  made  to  state 
the  Unitarian  position  with  authority.  But  when 
we  come  to  examine  these  attempts  we  are  apt  to  be 
struck  with  two  things :  first,  that  they  have  a  certain 
apologetic  tone,  as  if  the  main  point  were  not  to  say 
frankly  just  what  the  writer  himself  thinks,  but  rather 
to  show  that  Unitarians  are  pretty  good  Christians 


I'MTAKIANISM:     WHAT    IS    IT  I  3 

after  all, —  in  short,  to  come  as  near  the  popular  creed 
as  may  be  without  quite  hitting  it;  and  secondly, 
that  they  are  mostly  made  up  of  details,  or  brief 
formulas  of  religious  phiaa  t  points  of  Bible- 

interpretation, —  notoriously  wide  apart  from  the 
opinions  of  many  who  rate  themselves  as  Unitarians, 

and  who  stand  in  general  esteem  as  well  as  anybody 
among  them. 

I  have  spoken  of  one  way  of  Looking  at  the  matter, 
—  that  which  we  may  call  the  &&  taiian  or  dogmatic 
way.    The  other  is  what,  for  distinction,  we  ma . 
the  scientific  way:  that,  namely,  which  we  take  as 
Btudente  of  the  laws  of  thought,  or  of  religion 
velopment  in  a  broad  In  other  words,  it  is 

the  history  of  a  Movement  we  study,  not  the 

attitude  of  a 

Not  that  dnitarianisni  has  generally  been  true  in 

thought  to  what    it   is   in   fact      It   is  much   easier  to 

figure  itself  a  than  as  a  movement  away  from 

all  jed  it-  -  from  a  dogmatic  toward-  a  purely  scientific 
conception  of  religious  truth.     Hut  this  latter  view  is 

that   which  we  shall  have  to  tali  would  do  any 

justice  to  its  history. 

[n  particular  it  is  d  many 

inconsistencies  in  that  history.     I  do  not   say,  to 

apologize  for  them.      I  have  not  the  least  intention  of 

saying  a  word  in  apology.     1  may  perhaps  have  to 

speak  of  B  good  many  things  as  a  critic,  but  certainly 
not  as  an  apologist.  In  a  very  near  and  BpeciaJ 
sense  I  nitarianism  is  my  birthright,  which  it  would 
be  dishonorable  as  well  as  painful  to  disown.  As  to 
that,  I  am  entirely  content  with  the  position  in  which 


4  ANTECEDENTS. 

Providence  has  placed  us ;  and  I  do  not  think  we 
need  to  look  far  along  the  line  of  our  history  to  find 
abundant  matter  of  pride  —  if  we  choose  to  indulge 
it  —  in  our  antecedents  and  our  record.  That,  among 
the  rest,  it  will  be  my  business  to  show  if  I  can. 

The  historical  view  which  I  propose  to  take  is 
necessary,  then,  for  justice  to  the  Unitarian  movement, 
whether  as  regards  its  opponents  or  its  friends.  On 
one  hand,  you  would  get  from  the  written  statements 
of  Unitarians  a  notion  that,  however  it  may  be  with 
their  opinions,  their  method  differs  from  the  Orthodox 
only  by  a  hair's  breadth,  being  just  a  little  more  pre- 
cise, rigid,  and  scrupulous  in  its  exposition  of  partic- 
ular passages  and  texts,  while  avoiding  mystery  and 
bringing  poetry  down  to  the  level  of  plain  sense. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  broad  popular  judgment, 
which  it  cannot  conciliate  or  escape,  holds  Unitarian- 
ism  responsible  for  a  radical  drift,  thinly  covered  by 
conservative  phrases,  or  hidden  from  itself,  perhaps, 
by  the  mist  of  pious  feeling.  It  is  very  important 
for  our  own  honesty  and  self-respect  that  we  should 
know  how  much  of  this  is  true.  Unitarianism  has 
educated,  it  has  also  enlisted,  a  great  variety  of  opin- 
ion :  is  there  any  real  unity  behind  this  diversity  ? 
It  claims  to  be  one  form  of  religious  doctrine ;  namely, 
the  Unity  of  the  Godhead  :  but  does  its  name  after  all 
mean  anything  more  than  "unity  of  spirit"  among 
its  adherents,  —  if,  indeed,  so  much  as  that  ?  And 
these  are  questions  to  which  it  seems  impossible  to 
give  any  other  answer  than  an  historical  answer. 
They  must  be  met  by  the  record,  not  of  opinion,  but 
of  fact. 


WHAT    IS    ITS    TASK  \ 

Moreover,  in  no  one  thing  has  the  independence 
claimed  by  Unitarians  been  more  freely  asserted  than 
in  their  criticism  of  themselves  and  of  one  another. 
This,  in  fact,  is  one  standing  charge  of  weakn. 
them.     Still,  in  matters  of  this  sort,  honesty  is  a  good 
deal  more  important  than  strength,  especially  than  a 
false  show  of  strength.     It   is  rather  to  their  i 
that    there   is   little    factitious    unity   among    them. 
Their  efforts  after  unity  have  been  not  mnohinthe 
way  of  suppression  and  exclusion  ; 
merging  outspoken  differences  in  a  common  sentiment 
or  a  common  work.     Their  very  title  sonic  of  them 
have  disowned  in  the  name  of  a  broader  Christianity 
or  a  broader  humanity,    This  breadth,  this  i 

has    been    inevitable,   under   the    condition   of  things 

they  stood  in.     But  it  is  mere  justice  t<>  acknowledge 

the  fact  of  it,  with  whatever  credit  it  may  di 
least  to  recognise  its  value  in  attempting  the  B] 
problem  that  had  to  I 

For  that  problem   will   appear   more   radical    and 
difficult   in   proportion   SS    we    feel    the    fundamental 

change  we  undergo  in  passing  bom  a  dogmatic  to  a 

scientific  method  in  religious  things. 

I  will  not  anticipate  lure  what  will  appear  more 
plainly  as  we  get  farther  mi;  except  t<>  sty  that,  far 
from  accepting  the  methods  of  physical  science,  it  is 
deliverance  from  them  we  seek,  in  establishing  those 
of  what  we  may  rightly  call  religious  science.  The 
question  of  method  is  far  deeper  than  that  of  any 
application  or  result  of  a  given  method  ;  and  a  e! 
of  theological  method  means  a  great  revolution  of 
religious  thought.    That  such  a  revolution  —  distantly 


6  ANTECEDENTS. 

heralded  by  the  controversies  of  the  Eeformation  — 
is  in  full  sweep  in  the  religious  world,  I  must  take 
for  granted,  not  seek  to  prove.  I  have  only  to  say 
further,  by  way  of  preface,  that  Unitarianism  could 
hold  no  more  honorable  historical  position  than  as 
consciously  aiding  in  that  larger  movement,  and  do 
no  more  honorable  task  than  to  help,  ever  so  little, 
towards  that  higher  intellectual  and  spiritual  life 
which  it  betokens. 

The  name  Unitarian,  it  is  perhaps  needless  to  say, 
has  been  given  by  general  consent  to  that  style  of 
theology  which  is  unable  to  see,  or  refuses  to  see, 
a  distinction  of  persons  in  the  Godhead,  whatever 
that  may  be  interpreted  to  mean.  In  this  sense, 
Mahometans  are  called,  and  very  justly  called,  a 
Unitarian  sect,  or  rather  a  vast  group  of  Unitarian 
sects.  They  have  even  been  called  a  Christian  sect, 
since  they  hold  Jesus  to  have  been  one  of  the  six 
great  prophets,  along  with  Adam,  Noah,  Abraham, 
Moses,  and  Mahomet.  And,  in  fact,  their  indignant 
and  intolerant  proclamation  of  the  divine  unity  was 
aimed  at  the  fantastic  corruptions  of  Eastern  Chris- 
tianity quite  as  much  as  at  the  multitude  of  Arabian 
idols. 

But  that  is  simply  a  term  of  intellectual  definition. 
As  we  understand  the  word,  it  defines  those  who 
belong  within  the  broad  circle  of  Christendom,  and 
not  to  any  of  the  outlying  circles.  Those  who  hold 
it  generally  insist  very  positively  —  even  if  somewhat 
dryly,  and  with  a  lack  of  Orthodox  reverence  and 
fervor — on  the  absolute  supremacy,  nay,  the  absolute 
perfection  of  Jesus  as  a  divinely  appointed  teacher 


THE   LIMITS    OF    UNITARIANISM.  7 

and  guide ;  and  those  who  do  not  state  it  quite  so 
dogmatically  nevertheless  hold  that  the  gospel  pro- 
claimed by  Jesus  contains  the  key  and  the  inspiration 
of   that   vast    religious   and    moral    force    known   as 
Christianity,  and  is  in   fact  the  solution,  from  the 
highest  point  of  view,  trf  the  knottiest  problems  that 
touch  human  character  and  conduct     So  that  the 
bleak  monotheism  of  Mahometanism  does  not 
into  the  account,  any  more  than  the  philoso] 
monotheism  of  Plato  and  Cicero,  in  a  fair  his! 
view  of  what  the  name  Unitarian  im]  I 

in,  cot  only  the  earliest  Christian  belief  —  that 
of  the  Brat  disciples  and  of  the  v  bament  —  was 

really    BS  we  think;  unitarian;  but,  after  the  doctrine 

of  Christ's  divinity  became  dominant,  there  were 
many  lied  heretical,  which  held  various  forma 

of  unitariani-m,  or  near  ap]  to  it,  —  S.iU-llian, 

Arian,  Nestorian,  and  the  restj  —  which  there  is  n<» 
need  to  consider  here,  since  they  w<  borne 

by  the  immense  sweep  of  the  current  of  church  be- 
lief, or  else  suppressed  by  the  heavy  hand  of  church 
authority.  Except  for  mere  antiquarian  curiosity, we 
have  to  do  only  with  those  forms  of  it  which  have 
arisen  in  modern  times,  —  thai  is,  sinoe  the  contro- 
versies of  the  Reformation. 

It  happens,  too,  that  that  form  of  it  which  bj 
during  the   Reformation  period  has  had  wry  little 
elleet  on  later  opinion;  at   least  on  that  current  of 
opinion  which  sets  towards  us.    There  were  Unita- 
rians of  the  school  of  Socinus,  learned,  critical,  hoi 
devout;  hut  a  more  scrupulous  orthodoxy 
in   turning   their   name   into   a   byword   of  reproach. 


8  ANTECEDENTS. 

The  name  Socinian  has  been  often  cast  against  mod- 
ern Unitarians ;  and  has  always  been  disclaimed  by 
them,  as  belonging  to  a  phase  of  rationalism  which 
they  had  nothing  to  do  with,  while  they  were  quite 
free  to  profess  honor  and  respect  to  the  founders  of 
that  school.  Again,  there  has  been  a  distinct  Uni- 
tarian tradition  eastward  in  Europe,  forming  a  current 
(it  would  seem)  quite  independent  of  western  opinion, 
whose  names  of  honor  are  the  Polish  brethren,  and 
the  careful  scholars  of  Transylvania,  only  lately  known 
to  us  by  personal  communication.  With  these,  too, 
our  inquiry  has  nothing  practically  to  do. 

Still  further,  to  narrow  our  field  within  easy  com- 
pass, quite  a  number  of  religious  bodies  exist  which 
are  really  unitarian  in  belief,  though  they  do  not 
take  this  as  their  recognized  name,  and  stand  outside 
this  particular  movement.  Thus  the  Swedenborgians 
acknowledge  only  one  Lord,  and  him  only  in  the 
person  of  Christ.  The  Universalists  are  generally 
unitarian  in  theology ;  but  with  a  powerful  denomi- 
national organization  of  their  own,  and  starting,  in 
their  doctrinal  history,  with  a  view  of  the  atonement, 
and  of  its  universal  efficacy,  which  parts  them  still 
more  widely  from  Unitarians  than  from  the  Orthodox 
sects.  The  "  Christian  "  sect  is  unitarian ;  but  on  the 
basis  of  a  rigid  scripturalism,  and  with  antecedents 
that  separate  it  completely  in  spirit  from  what  is 
historically  known  as  such.  And  among  the  forms 
in  which  Orthodoxy  is  held  by  liberal  and  cultivated 
minds,  there  are  some  which  can  hardly  be  distin- 
guished, in  any  fair  analysis,  from  a  very  common 
phase  of  the  Unitarian  belief. 


UNITAKIANISM    IN    ENGLAND.  9 

Now  I  am  not  dealing  with  the  matter  philosophi- 
cally or  dogmatically,  but  only  historically ;  and  so 
it  is  necessary  to  set  aside  all  these  outlying  forms, 
though  some  of  them  are  extremely  interesting  and 
important     I   have   to   do  only  with  that  distinct 
series  of  antecedents  which  has  determined  the  i 
ence  of  Unitariamsin  as  we  know  it.  and  has  shaped 
the  character  of  its  belief.     Ami  these  antecedents  do 
not  carry  us,  at  present,  beyond  Rngland  ana   '. 
And  besides,  as  [Jnitarianism  lias  had  quite  a  differ- 
ent history  in  these  two  countri      I 
briefly   only,   to    a    point   <>r   two   of   the    hi-t<<ry   of 
opinion   in    Rngland   before  coming  to  that   which 
really  concerns  ourse! 

The   names   of  Milton.    Locke  and    Newton 
frequently  cited  as  the  t!  - 

English  unitarianism.      Let         -top  a  n. 

what  those  great  names  stand  for. 

Milton's  unitarianism  was  first  clearly  brought  to 
light  in  bis  work  en  Christian  Doctrine,  of  which  the 
manuscript  was  found  in  L825  It  shows  that  the 
reflection  of  his  lutei  turned  upon  the 

1  learning  he  had  gathered  in  his  labo- 
rious lih',  led  him,  <»n  grounds  of  simple  interpret 

of   the    Bible,    to    an    opinion  —  a   certain    qualified 

Arianisni  —  strange  and  daring  then,  though  as 

ferent  from  what  would  be  tailed  scientific  cnt 
now   as  from  the   high    Calvinistic  orthodoxy  of  his 
younger  days. 

The  names  of  Locke  and  Xewton  show  that  the 
unitarian  opinion  —  held  by  them  in  a  very  grave  and 

reverent  temper,  widely  removed  from  radical  di 


10  ANTECEDENTS. 

—  made  part  of  that  great  movement  of  reason  and 
science  which  dates  from  their  day.  No  names  were 
or  perhaps  are  held  in  so  high  honor  by  the  average 
English  mind  as  those  two.  Their  influence  was 
immense  in  their  own  day  and  after,  and  is  a  strong 
force  even  now.  Newton's  name  is  even  reverently 
cited  by  Englishmen  as  that  of  the  greatest  intellect 
ever  created,  and  probably,  all  things  considered,  the 
greatest  man.  Locke,  more  than  any  one  else,  guided 
the  broad  movement  of  English  speculation,  as  it  has 
swept  on  down  to  our  own  time.  He  did  not  give  his 
name  to  any  school  in  theology  professedly  unitarian, 
though  his  own  opinion  lay  that  way.  But  his  de- 
fence of  "  The  Eeasonableness  of  Christianity  "  brought 
religion  directly  to  the  bar  of  reason  and  argument, 
away  from  the  tribunal  of  church  authority  and 
dogmatism.  The  great  rationalistic  theologians  of 
the  English  Church  followed  his  lead,  —  at  their  head 
Samuel  Clarke,  whose  orthodoxy  was  as  liberal  and 
easy  as  that  of  the  devouter  school  of  Unitarians  now. 
In  short,  he  has  as  distinctly  the  repute  of  being  an 
Arian  as  Milton  has,  —  that  is,  owning  a  Christ  above 
all  ages  and  before  all  worlds,  which  is  also  a  favorite 
form  of  the  elder  unitarian  speculation. 

But  it  was  not  so  much  in  the  Church  as  outside 
the  Church  that  the  rationalistic  movement  in  theol- 
ogy was  strongest.  There  sprang  up  early  in  the  last 
century  a  remarkable  controversy,  which  has  come 
down  with  something  of  an  ill  name  to  our  own  time. 
I  mean  the  attack  on  the  popular  theology  made  by 
the  English  Deists.  They  were  not,  any  of  them, 
very  able  men,  or  very  eminent  scholars,  by  the  stand- 


THE  DEISTICAL   CONTROVERSY.  11 

ard  of  the  present  day,  or  even  of  their  own.     Bat 
they  made  a  great  noise  in  the  theological  world,  and 
it  will  sometimes  happen  that  some  zealous  | 
even  now  go  out  of  their  way  to  kick  the  dead  body 
of  theil  opinions,  and  to  dye  their  okseure  repul 
with  a  little  deeper  shade  of  prejudice. 

And  they  had  indirectly  a  very  powerful  i 
They  compelled  the  church  theol  ind  on  its 

defence  with  the  weapons  i  nd  open  debet 

an  immense  advantagi  way.     Moreover,  by  a 

reaction  from  the  ind  dryn< 

this  reasoning  process,  and  the  <  ement  i! 

to  the  worldly  temper  of  the  established  Chnrch,  there 
came  up  into  history  that  great  heat  and  flan 
Methodism,  which  has  been  in  some  ways  the  most 
remarkable  and  powerful  force  in  Pi  tn  for 

the  last  hundred  and  forty  j  With  the  irai 

power  and  skill  of  its  organization  with  the  fervors 

of  its  piety,  with    its   active   mi  —  ionarv  '/eal.  with   its 

wonderful  hold  upon  the  rudest  classes  of  all,  and 
the  hardest  to  reach  through  religious  sympathy, 
Methodism  was  one  of  the  indirect  results  of  the 
rationalizing  spirit  that  had  issued  in  the  de 
controversy,  though  by  way  of  antagonism  and  re- 
coil. 

But  I  am  not  giving  a  histor]  rally, 

or  of  that  controversy  in  particular;  and  so  I  will 
only  add,  that  when   Christianity  was  driven  by  it  to 

appeal  to  the  bar  of  learning,  it  chanced  that  tfa 

eminent    scholar   who   did  most   to   refute   the 
tions  of  the  Deist*,  and  to  satisfy  the  English  mind 
on  the  ground  of  historv.  was  the  eminent  Unil 


12  ANTECEDENTS. 

scholar,  Lardner,  whose  great  work  in  defence  of 
historical  Christianity  is  a  standard  to  this  day.  I 
do  not  say  how  far  his  argument  satisfies  the  scientific 
thinkers  and  historical  students  of  our  time,  who 
have  shifted  their  ground  a  good  deal  from  that  of  a 
hundred  years  ago.  I  only  say  that,  when  modern 
Unitarianism  came  to  take  shape,  and  began  to  be 
known  under  its  own  name,  it  was  as  a  defence  of 
Christianity  on  the  grounds  of  reason  against  the  at- 
tacks of  reason.  That  gave  it  a  precise,  dry,  accurate, 
and  rationalizing  temper  from  the  start,  from  which 
it  has  never  been  quite  free,  —  the  very  antipodes  of 
Methodism  in  temper  and  doctrine,  so  far  as  such  a 
thing  could  be  within  the  recognized  boundaries  of 
Christian  belief. 

Thus  the  Unitarian  movement  which  we  date  from 
was  born  of  reason,  and  appealed  to  reason  from  its 
birth.  One  other  thing,  and  I  have  done  with  this 
historical  phase  of  it.  Keason  in  those  days  meant 
not  merely  argument  against  superstition,  or  enthu- 
siasm, or  false  theology :  it  also  meant  assertion  of 
the  rights  of  man.  It  was  a  time  of  revolution. 
Jefferson  was  a  unitarian  of  those  days,  of  the  more 
daring  and  rationalistic  school  that  sympathized  with 
French  opinion,  yet  in  his  way  a  serious  and  even  a 
devout  thinker.  His  assertions  of  human  right,  the 
"  glittering  generalities  "  which  he  put  in  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  were  of  the  gospel  of  humanity 
of  that  day ;  and  by  none  was  that  gospel  taken  up 
with  more  ardor  than  by  the  English  Unitarians, 
reasoners  and  independent  thinkers  as  they  were. 

The  most  brilliant  disciples   of   that  new  gospel 


THE  ENGLISH   UNITARIANS.  13 

were  the  group  of  enthusiastic  young  poets,  full  then  of 
socialistic  and  humanitarian  dreams,  —  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  and  Southey :  Coleridge  even  figured  once 
as  a  Unitarian  preacher.  This  great  revolutionary 
drift  —  part  reason,  part  sentiment  —  called  out  the 
wrath  and  alarm  of  the  saviours  of  society  in  those 
days,  Edmund  Burke  at  their  head,  whose  great  gen- 
ius bent  from  its  path  to  insult  and  reject  a  petition 
for  justice  presented  in  the  name  of  the  feeble  sect  of 
Unitarians.  His  splendid  harangues  on  the  philos- 
ophy of  politics  could  admit  nothing  but  eloquent 
scorn  for  anything  that  challenged,  however  humbly, 
the  imperial  majesty  of  Church  and  State. 

A  religious  movement,  like  a  political  revolution, 
takes  its  character  from  what  has  gone  before  it,  and 
must  be  studied  in  its  antecedents  quite  as  much  as 
in  its  events  and  symptoms.  For  that  reason  it  was 
necessary  to  show  how  modern  Unitarianism  —  in 
however  small  and  unnoticed  away  —  was  an  out- 
growth of  the  general  development  of  thought  in  the 
last  century  in  England.  In  reality,  it  probably 
existed  as  much  inside  as  outside  the  established 
Church,  in  that  great  body  of  "  latitude-men,"  or  lat- 
itudinarians  of  a  scientific,  free-thinking,  and  some- 
what worldly  habit  of  mind,  who  were  at  once  the 
intellectual  glory  and  the  spiritual  discredit  of  that 
Church.  I  do  not  see  why  Paley,  the  most  eminent 
churchman  of  one  hundred  years  ago,  was  not  as 
much  a  unitarian,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  as 
Price  or  Lardner. 

But  we  are  dealing  with  the  body  specifically 
known  as  such  ;  and  that  was  necessarily  a  dissenting 


14  ANTECEDENTS. 

body.  How  it  was  historically  connected  with  that 
large  and  most  honorable  body  of  Nonconformists, 
whose  dissent  was  one  of  the  noblest  acts  of  deliber- 
ate self-sacrifice  on  record,  and  how  in  particular  it 
claims  to  this  day  Presbyterian  traditions  and  in- 
heritance, it  would  take  more  historical  detail  than  I 
have  time  for,  to  explain.  Just  at  present  we  have 
to  do  only  with  one  or  two  characteristics  which 
those  antecedents  left  as  a  peculiar  stamp  upon  it. 

The  two  points  thus  most  strongly  marked  in  its 
history  are :  first,  that  it  was  a  movement  of  Reason 
in  sympathy  with  the  scientific  spirit;  and  second, 
that  it  was  a  movement  of  Right,  in  sympathy  with 
the  revolutionary  spirit.  These  two  characteristics  it 
will  be  necessary  to  keep  in  mind ;  because,  however 
disguised,  they  have  marked  its  history  ever  since, 
and  because  they  explain  the  two  sorts  of  controversy 
that  have  always  been  going  on  more  or  less  in  the 
Unitarian  ranks.  The  two  happened  to  be  represented, 
at  the  time  I  am  speaking  of  (nearly  a  hundred  years 
ago),  by  the  two  very  distinguished  names  of  Priestley 
and  Price.  The  first,  a  gentle,  brave,  able  man,  with 
high  repute  as  a  chemist  at  that  day,  was  driven  off 
by  a  mob  in  Birmingham,  about  1790,  and  spent  the 
last  years  of  his  life  in  Pennsylvania.  Price,  of  a  more 
speculative  and  radical  temper,  was  especially  honored 
with  the  hostility  of  Edmund  Burke,  in  the  zeal  of 
his  repugnance,  horror,  and  hate  against  the  French 
Revolution. 

With  such  forerunners  and  defenders  as  these, 
Unitarianism  soon  took  the  character  by  which  it  has 
been  best  known,  —  as  a  system  of  morality  anal  'piety 


RELIGIOUS    CHARACTER.  15 

founded  on  the  authority  of  a  divine  revelation  in  the 
Ni  w  Testament.  This  revelation  was  accepted  in  all 
sincerity  for  its  practical  uses ;  and  the  only  test  of 
its  efficacy  or  truth  was  held  to  be  its  practical  effect 
on  the  life.  At  the  same  time,  it  waa  interpret 
nearly  by  principles  of  pure  reason  as  could  be,  with- 
out forfeiting  its  distinctive  chant  Nation. 
This,  it  did  not  enter  into  the  religions  mind  of  that 
:  ition  to  deny.  The  Deists  of  I  d  I  and  the 
French  philosophers  —  including  snch  discipi 
theirs  as  Thomas  Paint-  —  it  repudiated  as  distinctly 
and  almost  as  indignantly  ss  did  the  more  orthodox 
sects. 

The  real  character  i  I  the   Unitarian  body  n 
quiet,    unostentatious,    domestic,    and    v.-ry    genuine 
piety;  a  who!  i  i,  perhaps  rather  common- 

place morality;  with  very  little  of  what  would  be 
called  emotion, enthusiasm,  or  the  more  ardent  \  I 
of  the  religious  Ufa    Coleridg  that  when  he 

was  a  Unitarian  he  used  to  preach  sermons  on  politi- 
cal economy,  and  rather  implies  that  that  was  the 
fashion  of  the  day.     But,  in  point  of  fact,  then 
a  solid  religious  background  of  Unitarian  thinking. 
Its  acceptance  of  the  christian  revelation  waa  quite 

positive  and  explicit,  though  as  far  M  possible  from 

anything  speculative  or  mystical.  Revelation,  to 
Unitarians,  was  a  foundation  divinely  laid,  and  be- 
yond question  of  man's  reason,  on  which  the  human 

structure  of  common-sense  and  morality  was  to  be 
built.     Reason  should  go  as  fa  »n  could  with- 

out disturbing  that  foundation.  And  all  that  is 
peculiar  in  the  Unitarian  system  of  belief,  or  style  of 


16  AHTBCK 

reasoning,  follows  naturally  and  easily  enough  from 
that  one  thing. 

To  begin  with  :  all  speculative  inquiries  about  the 
existence  of  God.  the  immortal  life  of  the  souL  ;. 
the  foundation  of  duty  were  superseded  by  I 
simple  and  downright  theory  .on  acce 

by  the  Unitarians.     The  miraculous  nar:  the 

Bible  being  once  taken  a  Llthei 

as  matter  of   course     The  mira 
cepted  as  facts,  proved  the  existence  -      who 

acted  upon  human  affairs  personally  and  ind 

from  motives  which  could  easily  be  inferred  and 
plained  to  the  common  mind,     rhe  re 
Jesus  —  that  and  that  alone,  ver.: 
tory  —  was  the  sufficient,  the  only,  the  unan- 
proof  of  man's  immortality ;   the  more  valid,  because 
Jesus  was  not  God  but  a  mam     The  positive  declara- 
tions of  the  Ten  Commandments  and  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  were  the  real  foundation  of  a  ind 

sanction  of  moral  duty.     The  definite  warnings  and 
predictions  of  the  Parables,  of  some  of  the  1 
and  of  the  Book  of  Revelation  were  the  real  and  : 
ground  of  anticipating  any  divine  judgment  of  r  . 
and  wrong.     Even  the  details  of  hi?  rre  held, 

in  the  early  Un  schools  of  expo 

precisely  and   accurately   predicted   by  I  rew 

prophets  and  in  the  visions  ;:   St     John  the  Divine. 
Priestley,  as  coin  pie:  rf  in  tea 

was.  goes  to  s  sincere! 

make  the  poetry  of  the  -  y«se  correspond  m 

the  even:-  :ern  history. 

I  have  been  thus  explicit  on  this  point,  because  it 


INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTER,  17 

was  held  with  great  positiveness,  and  is  that  from 
which  modern  L  nitarianism  dates,  however  far  its 
criticism  or  its  speculation  may  have  wandered  since. 
Taking  it.  too,  for  a  point  of  departure,  it  will  be  easier 
to  follow  thf  changes  which  ha  ont  in  the 

course  of  time;  and  easiei  rare  the  just 

the  charges  which  have  generally  been  made  upon  the 
ml  As  to  that  moderate  <>r  qualified  supernat- 
uralism,  there  was  as  much  unanimity  and  heartiness 
of  belief  in  it  among  the  early  Unitarians  as  can  be 
found  among  any  believers  in  any  foundati  m  of  any 
creed.    The  real  chara  I  ofthemoven 

Out  in  the  structure  which  was  huilt  upon  it 

In   the  first   place,   it  was  characteristic   of  that 
movemenl  to  put  \abL  an  interpretation  on 

the  language  of  the  Bibl  •  as  it  would  bear;  and 
really  broke  ground  in  the  direction  of  a  rationalism 
which  i\  honestly  disowned.     As  a  matter  of  course, 
it  took  thi  ible  explanation  n{  such  dogmas  as 

the  trinity,  the  deity  of  Christ,  the  atonement,  and 
so  on.  It  refused  to  accept  any  mysteries  on  these 
matters:  "Where  mystery  begins  religion  endi 

was  wont  to  say.      It  was  always  ready  and  glad   to 

get  scientific  explanations  of  Genesis,  long  before  it 
suspected  thai   I  -  might  not  be  inspired  truth. 

It  pointed  out  with  great  satisfaction  thai  the  famous 
text  of  the  "three  witi  was  undoubtedly  spu- 

rious; and  made   something  Out  of  the  freedom  g 

by  various  readings  of  other  famous  proof-texta    The 

earliest  critical  edition  of  the  New  Testament  of  very 
high  authority  —  Griesbach's —  was  first  published.  I 

believe,  in    England   or   here,  at    least  first  circulated 

2 


18  ANTECEDENTS. 

and  studied  with  any  zeal,  by  Unitarian  scholars. 
Some  of  these  were  relieved  to  find  that  the  first  two 
chapters  of  Matthew  do  not  stand  on  quite  such  firm 
ground  as  the  rest,  and  that  the  narrative  in  Luke 
says  nothing  distinctly  of  a  miraculous  birth  of  Jesus ; 
and  that  so,  without  at  all  denying  the  truth  of  the 
gospel,  they  might  well  believe  (as  doubtless  the  first 
Christians  did)  that  he  was  the  son  of  Joseph  as  well 
as  of  Mary.  Some  found  the  account  of  the  Tempta- 
tion easier  to  believe  by  supposing  that  the  tempter 
was  a  Pharisee,  or  some  emissary  of  the  Jews,  who 
wished,  as  it  were,  to  feel  beforehand  the  pulse  of  the 
new  movement,  or  to  break  its  force.  Some  found 
the  Transfiguration  best  explained  as  an  allegory  or 
a  dream. 

These  and  other  like  interpretations  led  to  the 
charge  of  playing  fast  and  loose  with  the  sacred  nar- 
rative, and  of  explaining  things  by  explaining  them 
away.  But  the  attempt  was  made  in  entire  good  faith, 
by  men  who  held  quite  seriously  to  what  they  received 
as  the  central  fact  of  a  real  revelation,  and  who  hon- 
estly supposed  they  were  doing  good  service  by  com- 
mending it  all  the  better  to  reasonable  minds.  They 
did  not  see  that  to  other  minds,  more  positive  and 
ardent,  there  are  no  degrees  of  difficulty  more  or  less, 
when  once  they  are  on  the  supernatural  plane :  take 
it  as  miracle  or  take  it  as  poetry,  to  such  minds  it  is 
the  exercise  of  the  understanding  itself  that  is  offen- 
sive on  such  matters.  The  half-way  rationalism  of 
the  Unitarians  did  the  good  work  of  training  several 
generations  in  a  natural,  sweet,  reverent,  and  whole- 
some piety ;  but  it  never  has  succeeded  in  making  its 


ETHICAL   CHARACTER.  19 

own  form  of  belief  acceptable  to  the  popular  religious 
mind. 

In  the  second  place,  it  was  characteristic  of  that 
movement  that  the  interpretation  it  put  upon  doctrine 
moral  interpretation.     Dogmatism  was 
.  allowed  to  dictate  terms  I  \  nat- 

ural explanation  was  eagerly  Bought  for  the  Fall  of 
man,  which  was  explained  away  into  hereditary  ten- 
dency, corruption  of  example,  or  infirmity  of  will. 
Election,  predestination,  perseveran  grace,  jus- 

tification, were  all  reduced  from  the  plane  of  d 
to  that  of  metaphysics,  and  from  this  again  to  that  of 
common-sense.    Nbthii  iffered  to  interfere  with 

the  consciousness  of  moral  liberty,  as  tl  round 

of  moral  judgment  of  right  and  wrong.  The  atone- 
meiit  of  human   uruilt  by  the  sacrifice  Of  an   in:. 

being  was  sheer  horror  and  blasphemy  in  such  a  view. 
Eternal  punishment,  for  any  -in  that  could  he  com- 
mitted by  a  Bhort-lived  mortal,  was  something  to  be 
thought  <»f  with  amazement  and  awe    The  langui 
some  ;  mod  quite  plain,  —  it  migl 

ilous  to  deny  it  outright ;  but,  if  true,  it  must  at  any 

rate   mean  that  moral    guilt  affects   the  BOul    itself   BO 

deeply  that  it  can  never  quite  recover,  certainly  not 
that  that  borror  is  arbitrarily  inflicted  by  an  inexorable 
God.  And,  as  this  rationalizing  temper  gained  a  lit- 
tle courage,  it  came  t,»  occupy  pretty  distinctly  the 

ground  of  restoration  in  the  dim  future,  and  to  bear 
it  out  with  an  anxious  interpretation  of  the  threaten- 
ing texts. 

Thus  Christianity,. or  the  doctrines  of  revealed  re- 
ligion, came  to  be  interpreted  as  a  system  of  divine 


20  ANTECEDENTS. 

truth  adapted  to  reason  and  common-sense,  while 
resting  on  a  foundation  strictly  miraculous  and  super- 
natural ;  and  as  a  system  of  human  duty,  or  morality, 
testing  on  the  same  sanction,  but  wholly  disengaged 
from  metaphysical  dogma.  The  actual  duties  of  life 
were  gravely,  sincerely,  and  piously  accepted,  —  its 
religious  duties  as  well  as  its  moral  duties,  whatever 
the  enemies  of  the  system  may  have  supposed.  I  do 
not  believe  that  the  recognized  offices  of  piety  and 
worship,  as  well  as  those  of  honesty  and  charity, 
were  ever  more  tenderly,  seriously,  and  faithfully  per- 
formed, than  by  the  adherents  of  a  system  so  unjustly 
represented  as  one  of  mere  negation.  The  fervor,  the 
passion,  the  stir  of  emotion,  the  warm  enthusiasm  that 
make  religion  a  mighty  power  in  the  soul,  to  move 
whole  multitudes  at  once,  —  these  made  no  part  of 
the  Unitarian  conception  or  experience  of  it.  And  a 
lack  of  genuine  sympathy  with  the  more  popular  forms 
of  Christianity  —  most  likely,  of  an  adequate  under- 
standing of  them  —  was  doubtless  a  creat  weakness 

CD  O 

in  that  system,  as  well  as  the  source  of  suspicion  and 
popular  dislike. 

This  weakness  on  the  emotional  side  was  the 
greater  pity,  because  under  a  proud  and  powerful 
Establishment,  like  that  of  England,  a  dissenting  sect 
is  at  best  in  a  somewhat  narrowed  and  depressed 
condition ;  and,  for  its  self-respect  as  well  as  its  vital 
power,  it  can  ill  spare  the  strength  which  only  reli- 
gious zeal  or  intellectual  enthusiasm  can  give.  We, 
whose  early  growth  was  sheltered  by  a  modest 
Establishment  of  our  own,  may  well  honor  that  fear- 
less honesty,  that  sincerity  of  conviction,  that  clenomi- 


UNITAUIANISM    IN    ENGLAND.  21 

national  loyalty,  which  have  been  the  life  of  English 
Unitarianisut     It  has,  besides,  its  calendar  of  names 
which  it  delights  to  honor.     And,  in  particular,  we 
cannot  overestimate   its  gain,  in  these  later  j 
from  the  great  literary  and  philosopbJ  nonce, 

the  superb  ethical  ideal,  and  the  high  plane  of  reli- 
gious thought,  of  its  best  known  intellectual  1< 
James  Martineau. 

But  I  have   not    set  out  to  criticise   this   earlier 
Unitarian  movement,  only  I  fairly  what  it 

1       ems  to  me  that  the  view  now  given  of  it  —  its 
ad  its  characteristics  —  may  help  show 

how  and  why  it  came  to  be  what  it  was,  and  make  OUT 

judgment  of  it  more  intelligent  and  just     Without 
going  into  detail,  I  think  we  have  now  Been  sufficiently 
what  the  doctrine  really  was,  when  first  it  found  a 
oized  name  and  place.     We  know  somethii 
trong  points  and  its  weak  points;  and  are  pre- 
pared to  understand  the  phase-  it  lias  WOIU  during  the 
iods   <'f   its   history   in   this  country,   la 

something  over  sixty  y< 


II. 

NEW    ENGLAND    UNITAEIANISM. 

11HE  term  Unitarian  has  been  known  in  this 
-  country  as  the  name  of  a  religious  body  since 
the  year  1815.  This  period,  again,  may  be  divided 
into  three,  which,  for  convenience,  we  may  call  the 
time  of  its  Growth,  including  its  controversy  with 
the  Orthodox  sects  ;  the  time  of  Criticism,  or  of  in- 
ternal controversy  among  the  parties  in  its  own  body; 
and  the  time  of  Construction,  —  that  is,  of  scientific 
criticism  on  one  hand,  and  of  denominational  organ- 
ization on  the  other. 

Each  of  these  periods,  again,  is  best  known  by  the 
name  of  some  representative  man :  the  first  by  that 
of  Dr.  Channing ;  the  second  by  that  of  Theodore 
Parker ;  and  the  third  by  that  of  Dr.  Hedge,  if  we 
take  it  on  the  speculative  side,  or  by  that  of  Dr. 
Bellows,  if  we  take  it  on  the  emotional,  denomi- 
national, or  constructive  side.  It  so  happens,  how- 
ever, that  neither  of  these  names,  except  the  last, 
belongs  very  closely  to  the  denomination  as  such. 
Dr.  Channing  never  desired  to  be  known  as  a  Uni- 
tarian, and  had  a  strong  distrust  of  all  denominational 
or  sectarian  names.  Theodore  Parker,  while  always 
asserting  his  right  to  rank  with  the  Unitarian  body, 
was  for  almost  all  the  time  of  his  public  life  in  sharp 


THREE   PERIODS. 

and  personal  controversy  with  the  great  majority  of 
its  members.  Dr.  Hedge,  probably  the  ablest,  deep- 
est, and  most  widely  cultivated  intellect  that  the 
denomination  has  embraced,  is  essentially  a  philo- 
sophical student  and  thinker  ;  and,  while  he  has 
given  as  much  impulse  as  any  man  to  its  thought, 
and  direction  to  its  higher  culture,  he  cannot  be  said 
to  have  done  anything  towards  shaping  those  definite 
opinions  by  which  a  religious  body  is  more  popularly 
known.  And  it  is  not  so  much  for  opinion  as  for  in- 
spiration and  organizing  force  thai  the  Unitarian  body 
is  indebted  to  I  >r.  Bellow  s,  whose  Bplendid  enthusiasm, 
generous  range  of  sympathy,  and  magnificent  work- 
ing force  may  almost  be  said  to  fa  I  the  de- 
nomination alive  for  whatever  tasks  may  lie  I 
it  in  the  future. 

The  three  dates  which  we  m  a  as  the 

ginning  of  these  periods  are  the  ; 
and  I860.     No  dates  like  these  can  be  quite  accurate; 
as  marking  limits  in  the  history  of  opinion,     The 
thoughts  of  <>nc  generation  melt  into  those  of  another 

like  the  tints  of  the   sky  alter  BUnset      Still,  each   of 

them  registers  a  definite  fact,  which  may  serve  as  well 
as  another  to  start  from.  The  first,  •  I  lid,  marks 
the  >ear  when  the  Unitarian  body  in  this  country  be- 
gan to  be  known  by  this  name,  which  till  then  had 
not  been  acknowledged  or  bestowed     The  year 

may  be  taken,  as  well  as  any,  as  the  birth-year  of  the 
Transcendentalism  which  had  BO  much  to  do  in  shap- 
ing the  form  of  liberal  opinion  we  have  known  ni 
at  least,  for  its  emergence  in  the  field  of  theology,  for 
it  was  in  that  year  that  "the  first  gun  of  a  long  battle" 


24  NEW   ENGLAND    UNITARIANISM. 

was  discharged,  in  a  review  by  Mr.  George  Ripley  of 
Martineau's  "  Rationale  of  Religious  Inquiry,"  pre- 
senting views  which  were  at  once  keenly  and  publicly 
attacked  by  Mr.  Andrews  Norton.  The  year  1860, 
again,  dates  not  only  the  death  of  Theodore  Parker, 
which  brought  to  a  close  the  sharpest  personal  con- 
troversy within  the  Unitarian  ranks,  but  the  moment 
of  time  when  the  great  moral  debate  of  our  era  was 
brought  victoriously  into  the  field  of  politics,  and 
events  began  visibly  to  lead  to  the  merging  of  all 
lesser  controversies  in  the  one  absorbing  struggle  for 
the  nation's  life.  Since  then,  new  bearings  have  been 
taken,  other  issues  appear,  and  other  methods  are  be- 
coming familiar  in  the  field  of  speculative  thought. 

I  shall  hope  to  make  these  periods  and  parties  more 
distinct  in  the  course  of  the  sketch  which  I  propose 
to  draw  of  the  denominational  life  during  these  sixty- 
seven  years.  For  it  is  a  sketch  that  I  propose,  not  a 
history.  I  shall  have  very  little  to  say  of  events,  as 
such ;  only  of  persons,  with  the  opinions  they  repre- 
sent, and  the  circumstances  that  denned  their  position 
in  the  religious  world,  whether  of  thought  or  action. 

Again,  I  have  not  to  do  with  the  course  of  opinion 
in  general,  or  the  broader  lines  of  the  religious  life, 
as  would  be  proper  if  my  aim  were  purely  historical ; 
but  with  a  limited  period,  a  narrow  locality  mostly, 
and  a  single  group  of  persons,  or  series  of  groups,  all 
belonging  within  the  same  general  range  of  ideas.  If 
this  is  what  is  meant  by  speaking  sometimes  of  Uni- 
tarianism  as  a  "  family  affair  "  and  a  "  Boston  notion," 
I  shall  for  the  present  admit  the  charge,  at  least  not 
question  it.     Unitarianism  is,  in  fact,  to  a  great  ex- 


UNITARIAN    ENTERPR]  25 

tent  a  local  growth  :  it  has  had  bat  little  ol 
of  propagandism,  and  a  rather  scanty  denominational 
history.      I   fa  thought   that    it- 

comfort  and  pride  in  former  day  kk  it  honestly, 

were  in  it-  narrow  range,  its  family  lilt  to  ab- 

sence of  sectarian  activity  or  ambition.  There  is 
next  to  nothing  to  tell  of  enterprise  and  adventure; 
Of  rather,  while  there  have  been  noble  individual 
examples,  then  en  comparatively  little  of 

certed,  well-planned  denominational  action. 

The  denomination  —  that  is,  the  men  composing  it 
—  have  never  been  Btingy;  none  less  so  It  would 
be  within  bounds  to  say  that  their  gifts  for  religious, 
charitable,  and  other  public  object  i .illy  edu- 

cational), outside  their  very  libera]  scale  of  church 
expenses,  could  be  reckoned  by  a  good  many  millions 
of  dollars  in  these  last  fifty  years,  By  far  the  largest 
pari  of  this  has  been  put  quietly  out  of  Bight  in  col- 
.  in    theological  instruction   or  publication 

home     missions     and    works     of    charity,    in    remote 

churches,  and  so  on,  and  has  never  made  a  figure  in 
denominational  reports.  In  fact,  there  has  been  a 
great  shyness,  a  very  unnecessary  modesty  and  reti- 
cence, if  uot  a  positive  dislike,  among  I  the 
most  generous   Unitarians,  of  anything  that  looked 

lectarian  glory:  Mr.  Am—  Lawrence,  for  exam- 
pi'',  one  of  the  most  intelligent  and  libera]  of  mer- 
chants, gave,  it.  is  said,  to  orthodox  institutions  twice 
over  what  he  did  within  the  lines  of  his  own  de- 
nominational connection  This  peculiarity,  if  not 
eccentricity  of  character,  has  to  be  taken  into  ac- 
count, in  Bumming  up  the  p  «ition  of  Unitarianism 


26  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITAMANISM. 

in  America,  and  in  making  any  estimate  of  it  as  a 
working  force. 

There  is  another  point  as  to  which  one  should  speak 
with  some  reserve,  which  yet  is  really  necessary  to 
be  taken  into  account  in  our  review.  It  is  implied  in 
what  I  have  already  said  of  the  Unitarian  body  being 
represented  by  a  group  of  men  quite  independent  of 
one  another  as  thinkers,  but  standing  personally  in 
very  near  relations  together.  I  should  desire  in  this 
view  to  bring  you,  if  I  could,  one  step  nearer  to  this 
group,  nearer  to  a  personal  interest  in  the  men  who 
made  it,  and  to  a  personal  acquaintance  with  them. 
This  is  the  more  necessary,  because  Unitarian  opinion 
has  always  been  an  individual  thing.  No  one  ever 
claimed  to  speak  as  responsible  for  the  thoughts  of 
other  men,  or  as  holding  them  responsible  for  his. 
Nothing,  in  fact,  except  a  personal  acquaintance  which 
goes  behind  the  spoken  or  published  word,  entitles 
one  to  speak  with  any  confidence  of  the  position  of 
individuals  in  a  group  of  men  so  entirely  independent 
of  one  another,  —  independent,  I  mean,  as  to  opinion ; 
independent,  except  it  be  in  the  way  of  a  common 
sympathy  and  culture,  and  a  mutual  good- will  and 
respect. 

This  I  may  do  with  the  more  confidence  here, 
because  the  lifetime  of  the  denomination  itself  is 
easily  embraced  in  the  memory  of  many  of  its  older 
members,  and  is  not  many  years  longer  than  my  own. 
As  a  child  I  was  brought  up  in  the  midst  of  all  its 
influences,  within  hearing  of  all  its  earlier  controver- 
sies, and  with  a  child's  natural  interest  and  pride  in 
the  names  which  were  considered  then  to  do  it  honor ; 


SOME    UNITARIAN    PREACHERS. 

while  my  earlier  university  and  professional  lif 
just  when  the  controversies  of  the  second  period  be- 
gan to  take  shape  and  force,  bringing  me  into  relal 
more  i  with  most  of  the  men  who  gave  its 

particular  stamp  and  coloring  to  fcfc  which 

1  am  trying  to  interpi 

I  will  recall  here  —  not  going  ontaid 
that  persona]  acquaintance  jnsl  I  i — a  few 

of  th  I 

ron  Bancroft,  father  of  the  historian,  and 
pioneer  of  Liberal  theology  in  i 
Dr.  Ohanning,  wli<»  for  more  than  tin.  i  was 

sly  identified  than  any  ol 
nominational  thought  and  life     tl      B 

father  and  BOn,  wt 

1  with  the  foundation  and  earlier 
this  School ;  (  m,  their  kinsman  by  mar- 

.  Long  the  most  brilliant  and  admired  pi 
the  Boston  circle,  —  whose  clei 

commanded  the  i  •  »f  trained  lawyi  i 

whose!  use  matched  the  worldly  wisdom  oi 

chant  and  financier,  —  the  eloquent  f  homely 

morality  and  the  religion  of  every-day  Life,  which  his 
touch  transfigured  to  poetry  and  Bplendor;  Orville 
y,  in  whom  thought  is  more  intimately  blended 
with  emotion  than  in  any  other  I  d  recall,  — whom 
I  have  heard  I  >r.  Putnam  call  I 
that   probably  ever  had  been  or  would  be,  —  who 

I  to  make  the  pulpit  a  confessional,  —  v. 
large  and  brooding  intelle<  I  If  to  interpret  the 

ace  of  the  <  Shristian  life,  —  whose  mind 
>usly  open,  till  long  - 


28  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

est  methods  or  discoveries  in  the  pursuit  of  truth  ; 
President  Walker,  whose  shrewd  wisdom,  generous 
tolerance,  wide  philosophic  culture,  and  dignity  of 
character  were  not  more  remarkable  than  the  cordial 
and  kindly  sympathy  he  always  had  for  younger 
men;  those  three  most  eminent  theological  scholars 
of  their  day,  Norton,  Palfrey,  and  Noyes,  whose  best 
work  was  given  to  theological  education  here ;  John 
Pierpont,  tender  religious  poet  and  high-tempered 
pulpit  warrior,  proud,  irascible,  always  eagerly  press- 
ing home  some  sharp  point  of  his  generous  and  hot 
conviction  ;  Ephraim  Peabody,  the  beloved  minister 
of  King's  Chapel,  whose  face  was  a  benediction,  —  in 
whom  gravity,  sweetness,  and  a  cautious  wisdom 
were  blended  in  a  combination  as  rare  as  it  was 
lovely  ;  Theodore  Parker,  the  generous,  dauntless,  in- 
corrigible apostle  of  free  thought,  the  heroic  leader  in 
social  and  political  reform,  pioneer  of  the  many  who 
in  these  latter  years  have  forsaken  the  ancient  ways  ; 
Ezra  Stiles  Gannett,  the  eloquent  and  noble  colleague 
of  Channing,  most  fervent  and  devoted  of  men,  whose 
conscience,  morbidly  acute,  was  burdened  with  every 
grief  and  sin  of  the  city  where  he  did  his  work, — 
whose  burning  speech  almost  inspired  the  cool  temper 
of  Boston  Unitarianism  with  his  own  missionary  zeal, 
—  of  whom  it  may  well  be  said  that  ten  such  men 
would  have  carried  Unitarianism  like  a  prairie  fire 
from  border  to  border  of  our  country ;  Thomas  Starr 
King,  that  bright  electric  light  of  liberal  theology, 
whose  flame  went  out,  alas !  on  the  Pacific  coast 
eighteen  years  ago,  —  whose  memory  is  wonderfully 
fresh  and  near  to  any  who  knew  him,  as  the  most 


SOME   UNITARIAN   LAYMEN.  29 

genial  of  friends,  tlie  most  cheerful  and  instructive  of 
companions,  the  most  lucid,  swift,  and  radiant  intel- 
Q08  that  it  lit  en  our  joy  to  know. 

To  these  I  should  add  a  few  names  of  eminent  lay- 
men beat  known  to  the  1  public,  and  variously 
representing  the  Unitarian  fellowship  and  idea:  John 
Quincy  Adams,  notably  the  one  most  thoroughbred 

man  that  our  conn  I,  put  in 

by  Washington  in  early  manhood,  an  eloquent  le 
in  this  University,  <■>:;  1  in  diplomat 

end  European  and  after  his  presidency  the 

veteran  champion  of  the  national  honor  in  the  II 
of   Representatives;   his  cousin  J  I  ranch,  the 

noble,  nprighl  >ut  Chief-Jus- 

tice of  the  District  of  Columbia  t  than  forty 

I '  Quincy,  last  of  the  proud  old  B 

Federalists,  who  died  at  tl  three,  the 

most  honored  citizen  of  New  England;  Chief-J 
Shaw,  one  of  the  most    learned  of  American  jurists, 
and  Bolidest   in  judgment  on  the  bench,  which  he 
dignified  for  nearly  thirty  years  ;  Edward   K 
the  most  cultivated  intellect,  probably,  that  has 
taken  pari  in  our  national  counsels;  Charles  Sumner, 
chivalrous  and  fearless  champion  of  the  Higher  Law 
in  the  darkest  our  histoi  r  Andrew, 

who  more  than  any  other  man  carried  the  heart  of 
New  England  with  him  through  the  war;  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  too,  in  early  life  a  Unitarian 
preacher,  now  everywhere  recognised  as  first  in  the 

highest  department  of  our  native   literature,  so  lately 

gone  that  it  is  as  if  he  were  -till  among  us,  serene, 
eloquent,  beloved,  in  the  sphere  he  made  and  bright- 


30  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

ened  by  his  radiance ;  these,  with  Bryant  and  Long- 
fellow, and  a  host  of  other  names  that  have  adorned 
the  literature  of  our  country,  belong  to  the  history  of 
New  England  Unitarianism,  and  ought  not  to  be 
spared  from  the  briefest  record  that  attempts  to  trace 
its  character. 

When  each  of  the  names  here  noted  recalls  a  dis- 
tinct personal  reminiscence,  and  most  of  them  a  per- 
sonal relation  more  or  less  intimate  and  dear,  you 
will  not  wonder  that  I  find  it  difficult  to  say,  out  of 
hand,  just  what  the  Unitarian  opinion  is  on  any 
given  matter,  or  what  it  is  that  Unitarians  believe 
in  general ;  or  that  I  am  a  little  impatient  that  they 
should  ever  be  judged  by  their  theology,  which  was 
so  small  a  fraction  of  either  their  religion  or  their 
life! 

Such  men  as  most  of  those  here  named  could  not 
be  —  I  may  say,  could  not  afford  to  be  —  dogmatists, 
enthusiasts,  sectarians,  propagandists  of  their  own 
opinions.  As  for  us  others,  it  is  simply  a  privilege 
and  honor  to  count  as  the  most  obscure  and  undis- 
tinguished in  such  a  company.  Unitarians  have  not 
been  united  by  fidelity  to  any  creed,  but  by  sharing, 
each  in  his  own  way,  a  common  spirit  and  life.  For 
myself,  I  have  spoken  to  more  than  a  hundred  and 
fifty  of  their  congregations,  and  have  met  groups  or 
families  of  their  communion  in  numerous  other  places, 
from  Hungary  to  Oregon,  everywhere  and  always 
finding  myself  equally  at  home.  And  thus  the  phrase 
"  common  spirit  and  life  "  has  a  very  distinct  meaning 
to  my  mind,  quite  different  from  what  it  would  be  if 
I  only  copied  it  out  of  a  book. 


IT    WAS    HOT   A    Bl  31 

I  have  said  that  the  Unitarian  body  in  this  country, 
either  in  its  origin  or  in  its  history,  was  not   i  3 
the  common  understanding  of  that  term.     It  has  had 
no  creed,  no  platform,  no  policy,  as  ;  and  it  is 

only  of  late,  and  rather  feebly,  that  it  has  made  any 
effort  to  prop  ly  within  the  lines 

of  oth<-r  sects  and 

When  I  Bpeak  of  Beets  in  this  tion,  I  do  not 

mean  bo  mnch  those  bodies  which  had  a  i 
historical  efore    th<       1 1    ment   of   this 

country,  and  made  part  of  its  original  religions  or 
even  political  organization,  —  Buch 
tionalists,  the  Presbyterians,  the  Episcopalians,  and 
(as  in  this  List  I  think  1  ought  to  include  the  Metho- 
dists, Ti.  limply  forms  of  church  government 
or  organization,  and  may  consist  with  any  lax. 
opinion.  Thus  the  main  body  <'i'  American  Unitari- 
ans are  Congregational;  those  in  England  are  or  were 
r  lyterian;  the  tii^t  church  in  Boston  to  declare, 
itself  unitarian  was    Episcopal,  and   remains  BO  in  its 

forms  <>\'  worship;  ami  preachers  have  continued  in 
the  Methodist  connection  with  avowed  unitarian 
opinions,  with  the  full  understanding  and  by  the 
strong  urgency  of  their  brethren. 

All  these,  if  I  understand  the  matter  rightly,  dealt 

originally  with  the  whole  populate  h,  in  the 

-where  they  wen  tively  established,  and 

were  no(  special  or  outside  organizations,  made  up  of 

uliar  way  of  thinking.     Ami 
last,   or   BOCts    proper,    I    should    especially   rank   the 
large,  vigorous,  Btrong,  and  aggressive  bodies  of  the 
Baptists  and   (Jniversalists,  which  are   founded  each 


32  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

upon  an  idea.  Their  organization,  their  policy,  their 
definite  and  aggressive  creed,  but  in  particular  their 
secession  from  other  religious  bodies  in  the  name  of 
that  creed,  are  what  makes  them  Sects,  as  distinct 
from  the  more  general  term  religious  body,  church, 
or  communion.  Now  the  Unitarians  do  not  belong 
to  the  former  class,  because  their  opinions  distinctly 
exclude  them.  They  do  not  belong  to  the  latter  class, 
because  they  have  no  distinct  creed  or  policy  of  their 
own.  Yet  again,  as  claiming  a  church  polity,  or 
communion,  and  a  recognized  fellowship  of  their 
own,  they  are  quite  as  far  removed  from  the  ranks, 
or  rather  from  the  scattered  individualisms,  of  "  free 
inquirers "  or  "  free  religionists,"  with  whom  they 
would  hold  it  the  most  glaring  misunderstanding 
to  be  confounded. 

I  have  tried  to  say  what  the  Unitarian  body  is  not. 
The  question  next  comes,  What  is  it  ? 

To  this  the  answer  has  been  made,  that  it  is  like 
one  of  those  unincorporated  districts  of  land  which 
are  sometimes  left  out  when  the  boundaries  of  towns 
and  villages  have  been  marked  out  all  round  them.1 
The  soil  may  be  as  good,  the  farms  may  yield  as  large 
an  increase,  the  families  may  be  as  contented,  pros- 
perous, and  happy;  but  they  do  not  belong  to  any 
known  political  organization. 

That  comparison  will  go  a  little  way :  it  expresses 
the  fact  of  independence,  but  it  does  not  express  the 
fact  of  unity.  It  leaves  the  look  of  the  matter  as  if 
Unitarian  churches  were  only  chance  and  random 
gatherings,  nuclei  as  it  were  of  religious  organization 

1  The  comparison  was  made,  very  felicitously,  by  Dr.  Putnam. 


GATIONALISTJ 

and  effort,  in  that  large  vague  half  of  the  community 

which  is  sometimes  lumped  together  as  "  unchurched." 
Now  this  means  too  little,  and  it  means  too  much, 
It  means   too    much,    I  it   turns   our   th 

upon  that  wide  chaos  of  opinion,  incoherent  and  un- 
formed, which,  as  "independent"  oras  "unchurched/1 
already  occupies  full  half  our  field  of  vision  when  we 
look  that  way,  and  which  tantly  enlarged  by 

tin*  shelling  off  or  the  undermining  of  elements  which 
are  aol  well  compacted  among  our  twenty  or  more 
religious  bodies.     It  means  too  little,  b»  au 
looks  the  one  thing  which  ■   and 

unity  to  this  particular  body,  and  mak< 
to  gather  it-  statistics,  and  in  som  direct 

action. 
That  one  thing  is  the  first  thing  of  all  which  should 
be  made  clear,  if  we  would  know  either  the  hi 
baracter,  or  the  present  attitude  of  Unit 
ism.     It   is  that,  historically,  it  is  tit,  liberal  w 
(he  great  Congregational  body  which  founded  the  first 
colonies  in  New  England,  and  gave  the  law  to  church 
and  State  for  more  than  two  hundred  years.     Of  a 
:  three  hundred  and  sixty-six  Unitarian  churches, 
one  hundred  and  twenty  or  more    including  a  large 
majority  of  those   in    Massachusel  riginal 

boa!  parishes  tonne, 1  under  the   I 
polity  of  the  Puritan  I  ttionalists,1     Of  I 

again,  thirty-eight  were  founded  before  the  year  1700, 
including  that  first  organized  I 
den  iii  L620,  a  few  months  before  the  colony  1  u 
on  Plymouth  Rock;  and  eighty  more  —  that  u 

1  Sac  "  Year  Book  of  the  Unitarian  Congregational  Chnn 

3 


34  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

hundred  and  eighteen  in  all,  or  more  than  one  third 
of  the  entire  number  —  were  established  before  the 
war  of  the  Revolution.  Thus  the  church  history  of 
Unitarianism  in  this  country  runs  back  almost  to 
the  time  of  the  colony  at  Jamestown,  and  about  two 
hundred  years  before  the  name  Unitarian  was  either 
given  to  or  accepted  by  one  of  its  congregations.  I 
do  not  say  the  expression  of  unitarian  opinion ;  but 
the  corporate  history  and  the  ecclesiastical  traditions 
belong  to  the  Congregational  body  at  large,  and  not 
to  that  of  a  separate  and  peculiar  sect.  That  is  to 
say,  again,  that  Unitarianism  has  received  its  full 
share  of  the  original  inheritance  of  that  great  Puritan 
body  which  made  the  English  Commonwealth  and 
the  Pilgrim  Colonies  of  America. 

I  say  this  not  at  all  to  enter  a  claim  w7hich  some 
persons  might  be  unwilling  to  allow,  but  simply  to 
state  the  historical  fact  of  the  case.  This  one  fact 
more  than  any  other  explains  the  nature  and  the 
seeming  inconsistency  of  the  Unitarian  record.  That 
is,  wThile  Unitarians  have  been  mostly  known  for  their 
liberal  opinion,  for  their  defence  of  free  inquiry,  and 
for  their  tolerance  of  out-and-out  scientific  or  phi- 
losophical radicalism,  —  at  the  same  time  the  temper 
of  the  body  at  large  has  been  mainly  conservative. 
The  large  majority  of  Unitarians,  truth  to  say,  have 
been  extremely  annoyed  and  scandalized  by  the  re- 
sults to  which  younger,  more  restless,  more  bold  and 
positive  minds  have  been  led ;  while  these,  again, 
have  been  full  of  angry  wonder  and  reproach  that 
any  limits  at  all  should  be  set  to  that  free  speculation 
and  inquiry  to  which  they  felt  themselves  invited. 


IT>    EARLY    CHURCH    HISTORY. 

The  misunderstanding  was  inevitable.  By  their 
history  and  antecedents  Unitarians  make  as  ancient 
and  conservative  a  religious  body  as  any  in  this 
country.  lopted,  however,  very  early,  liberal 

principles  of  interpretation;  and  th  r  the  mi- 

nt shock  of  "'  radicalism  "  1.  well 

over,  will  no  doubt  result  in  Larly, 

scientific,  ;i-   well  aa   ind  m,  noway 

,1c  t<»  thi  Ligious  1. 

real  origin,  then,  of  the  Unitarian  body  in  this 
country  was,  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  I 
tional  body  i.  M  includin 

the  leading  churches  1:1  !'•■  '  >n  but  one,  had  come, 
from  radually  to  adopt 

libera]  opinions—  Arminian   or  free-will    as 

oppoa  Lvinistic,  and  afterwards  Unitarian  as 

opp  sed  to  Trinitarian.1  Just  how  and  why  this 
division  of  opinion  had  come  about,  it  is  not  easy  to 
say      I:  corresponds  nearly  enough  with  the  natural 

division   we  always   find   among   people   of   tin'   smic 

genera]  way  of  thinking,  some  rigid  an 

or  liberal     In  particular,  it  seemed   to 

from  the  influence,  and  to  follow  the  widening  circle 

of  culture,  that  went  out  from  Harvard  <  "••11.  . 

M   think   this  was  the  cut   in  everj  country   town  <■: 
population  in  eastern  Massachus* 

Andover,  and  Ipswich,  which  wore  kept  from  following  the  drift 
of  liberal  opinion  by  the  personal  weight  and  influence  of  their 
preachers:  at  least  this  is  true  of  the  sble  sad  rigid  Dr.  V. 
Charlestown.    This  drift  of  Liberal  opinion  reached  back  shout  forty 
miles,  its  northerly  half  tin  :. 

neoticut  River,  ami  lapping  over  into  southern  New  Hampshire, 
limits,  sdding  a  lew  of  the  lar_  pretty 

Dearly  the  geographical  extent  1  .land  Unkuriamain. 


36  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

then  as  now  a  chief  centre  of  secular  learning  in  this 
country.  The  men  who  were  most  moved  by  this 
influence,  or  who  were  in  advance  of  it,  were  often 
called  —  by  a  phrase  borrowed,  I  believe,  from  Eobert 
Boyle  —  the  "  Latitude-men  about  Cambridge."  The 
free-thinking  of  the  Eevolutionary  period  may  have 
had  something  to  do,  but  I  should  think  not  much, 
with  this  latitude  of  opinion. 

The  circumstance  which  more  than  any  other 
brought  it  into  public  notice  and  recognition  was  the 
appointment  of  Henry  Ware  to  the  post  of  professor 
of  Divinity  in  Harvard  College,  in  1805.  This  was 
strongly  protested  against  at  the  time  by  the  more 
orthodox  party,  as  bad  faith  to  the  founder  of  that 
professorship,  —  the  eminent  and  generous  London 
puritan,  Thomas  Hollis;  and  it  is  deplored  to  this 
day,  with  indignant  grief,  by  that  party,  who  do  not 
abandon  their  hope  of  seeing  the  University  brought 
back  to  the  faith  of  the  fathers. 

This  personal  episode  helps  to  explain  a  good  deal 
of  the  sharp  tone  in  the  controversy  that  followed. 
Still  there  was  no  breach  in  the  Congregational  ranks 
for  ten  years  after,  nor  a  very  open  one  for  some  years 
later  still.  The  forward  steps  that  led  to  forming  a 
Unitarian  party  were  in  the  way  of  literary  and 
scholarly  criticism.  It  happened  that  a  very  brilliant 
group  of  young  men  —  cultivated,  ardent,  eloquent  — 
graduated  from  the  University  in  those  days,  of  whom 
Edward  Everett  became  best  known  to  history ;  but 
Joseph  Stevens  Buckminster  —  a  preacher  in  Boston 
for  some  five  years,  until  his  death  in  1812  —  had  far 
the  strongest  influence,  by  the  singular  grace  of  his 


ITS    LirKUARY    ANTECEDEti  '■<. 

oratory,   his  wonderful  social  charm,  his  eager  and 
at  enthusiasm  as  a  scholar.  years  after 

his  death,  I  have  lu-ard  it  told,  t 
merchants  who  could  not  speak  of  him  without  I 
This  bright  circle  of  personal  force  and  cultun 

rized  in   tlii-   then   famous   "  Anthology   Club," 
which   Btarted  one  of  the  first  Literary  and  ci 
journals  of  the  country,  the      M    I  thly  Anthology," — 
lineal    pre  I  c    of    the    u  <  'hristian    1  disciple,*1 

"  Chri  -* .  an   Examiner,"  and  '  [Jnitarian   Review,"  — 
which  was  really  the  harbinger  and  mouthpie 
early  Unitarian  theol 

I  Bhall  n<»t  trouble  you  with  any  account  <>f  the 
contro  liich  followed     It  i-  admirably  told  by 

Mr.  William  Gannett  in  his  father's  Biography,  and 
need  not  be  told  again.  The  details  of  battles  and 
skirmishes  of  opinion  are  apt  to  i  dull  part 

of  the  history  "I  any  tin)'*,  except  where  some 

Dal  interest  comes  in.  I  wish,  however,  to  il- 
lustrate from  another  point  ire  of  the 
change  which  was  going  on;  and  this  I  shall  find  it 
easiest  to  do  by  a  Bingle  example. 

A-  you  know,  by  ecclesiastical  law  the  Cong] 
tioual  ( toder  made  part  of  the  original  constitution  of 
England.     Each  town  must  maintain  a  church 
or  parish  organization,  and  every  voter  must   !><'  a 
church-member.     This  old  constitution  of  thing 

not   wholly    done   away    in    MaSSS   husettfl    till 

when  the  Voluntary  system  was  fully  adopted.    Till 

then,  every  citizen's  tax-hill  included  a  reli 

and,  till  1820,  that  tax  must  be  paid  for  the  BU] 
of  a  Congregational  Church. 


38  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

For  example,  my  father  was  settled  in  1816  as 
minister  of  a  country  town.  The  settlement  was  for 
life,  and  the  salary  was  directly  voted  and  paid  by 
the  Town  from  the  same  fund  that  made  the  town 
roads,  supported  the  town  schools,  and  paid  for  the 
petty  town  police  of  constable,  fence-viewer,  and 
local  surveyor.  Quite  within  my  own  recollection, 
his  ordinary  household  expenses  were  paid  by  drafts 
on  the  town  treasurer,  exactly  as  they  would  be  by 
cheques  upon  a  bank.  One  rigid  old-school  puritan, 
Asaph  Eice,  had  opposed  and  dissented  from  my 
father's  settlement  on  the  ground  of  his  liberal  theol- 
ogy ;  and  probably  the  majority  would  have  been 
quite  as  well  satisfied  with  a  more  orthodox  preacher ; 
but  that  did  not  prevent  them  all,  Asaph  Eice  in- 
cluded, from  being  good  friends  and  contented  parish- 
ioners. Nor  did  the  same  thing  prevent,  for  a  while 
at  least,  the  common  professional  courtesies  in  neigh- 
boring towns,  from  orthodox  and  liberal  alike.  Sect- 
arian lines,  since  so  sharply  marked  and  so  jealously 
guarded,  were  only  beginning  to  be  known.  The 
charming  simplicity  of  this  arrangement  only  began 
to  be  disturbed  in  1827  by  the  formation  in  the  vil- 
lage of  a  little  Baptist  church,  which  was  a  great  grief 
to  my  father,  since  the  first  steps  in  it  were  taken  by 
near  personal  friends  of  his,  who  were  conscientious 
enough  to  tax  themselves  at  the  start  the  extra  cost 
of  it,  after  paying  their  share  to  the  support  of  the 
legal  Parish.  This,  of  course,  they  felt  to  be  a  great 
injustice,  —  as  in  fact  it  was ;  and  in  six  years  more 
that  hardship  was  removed  by  the  law  of  complete 
ecclesiastical  freedom,  under  which  we  are  now  living. 


THE    OLD    PABISH    SYSTEM.  39 

Now  a  legal  establishment  can  never  be  a  sect, 
properly  speaking.  It  has  got  to  meet  not  only  the 
average  mind,  but  a  g]  ty  of  minds.     It  must 

include  a  wide  latitude  of  opinion,  ami  admit 

i  of  debate.     It  may  be  fairly  doubted 
whether  the  conditions  of  a  general,  manly,  healthy, 

.!.  charitable  growth   of  i  -   thought  are 

ever  so  veil  nut  as  in  the  breadth,  the  y,  tin1 

broad  tolerance  of  a  religious  establishment,  when 

ined  with  rioua  and  in- 

telligent population    V  t  religious  earne 

it  admit,  I  favor.     The 

"great  awakening n  under  Jonathan  Edwai 
solitary  phenomenon  which  in  fact  banished  him  from 

Northampton  parish),  ami  the  "revival"  under 
Whitefield  was  by  a  force  from  abroad.    Both,  it  may 
fairly  be  assumed,  led  to  a  reaction  in  the  direction 
of  liberalism!  which  they  helped  full  as  much  as  they 
opposed     The  sober  common-sense  view  of  rel 
which   makes  it  in  the  broadest  way  religion   for  the 
people,  ia  nourished  nowhere  bo  well,  1  think, 
an  establishment  like  that   of  a  century  ago  in 
England,  which  sheltered  the  growth  ot  manly  1. 

tarian  thought,  which  nurtured  a  generous  and 
growing  scholar-hip,  and  which  has  left  its  mark  on 
nothing  more  deep  and  distinct  than  on  the  entire 
Unitarian  movement  in  this  country,  BO  far  as  it  can 
he  traced  to  that  sour 

In  conclusion,   1  will  speak  very  briefly  of  that 

movement  at  the  period  when  it  still  i 

distinctly  the  features  of  its  origin,  and  v. 

sented  by  that  group  of  >  '.lent  men 


40  NEW   ENGLAND   UNITARIANISM. 

whom  I  have  spoken  of  before.     This  period  may  be 
taken,  roughly,  as  from  forty  to  fifty  years  ago. 

The  general  theory  of  Christianity  as  accepted  at 
this  stage,  which  is  sometimes  called  "  old-school 
Unitarianism,"  was  (as  President  Walker  was  in  the 
habit  of  describing  it)  especially  adapted  to  the  mind, 
shaped  as  it  were  to  the  demand,  not  of  speculative 
theologians,  but  of  serious  and  educated  laymen. 
Such  representative  names  as  those  of  Judge  White, 
Judge  Story,  and  Judge  Shaw  at  once  occur,  when 
we  recall  that  period.  These  men  clung  to  Christi- 
anity with  the  tenacious  hold  of  an  honest  reverence 
and  a  strong  conviction ;  with  a  trained  masculine 
understanding,  also,  which  tolerated  no  affront  to 
reason  or  good  morals.  Paley  and  Lardner  had  es- 
tablished the  historical  foundations :  the  structure  to 
be  built  upon  them  was  that  of  rational  piety,  per- 
sonal morality,  and  civic  virtue.  This  was  the  manly, 
dignified,  and  sober  type  of  "  Boston  Unitarianism," 
a  name  never  to  be  named  without  gratitude  and 
honor. 

Lawyer-like,  too,  it  was  impatient,  perhaps  intol- 
erant, of  any  questioning  of  the  foundations.  The 
Bible,  these  men  held,  was  a  minister's  credentials. 
Make  what  abatement  in  the  popular  notion  of  it  you 
may  and  must :  then  take  it,  or  else  leave  it,  for  what 
it  claims  to  be,  —  a  revelation  of  absolute  authority 
to  declare  the  law  of  life,  or  to  instruct  the  mind  on 
the  highest  conceivable  truth.  To  their  strong  and 
sober  sense,  Christianity,  without  a  supernatural  rev- 
elation of  truth,  without  miracles,  without  the  divine 
authority  of  Jesus,  was  a  weak  delusion,  if  not  a 


CHARACTER  OF   EARLT    UNITARIAN]  41 

wicked  and  hypocritical  pretence.     The  suhtilt: 
theologians,  the  refinements  of  criticism,  were  not  for 
their  style  of  mind.     Christianity  was  holy  and  ven- 
erable to  them,  because  it  meant  that  virtue  which 
regulates  the  life  and  saves  the  S  In  the  words 

which  I  copy  from  the  clear  firm  autograph  of  1' 
dent  Quincy,  —  the  accurate  and  1 
of  this  mental  man  happirn 

I  urity  but  freedom  m  none  but  i  b 

virtue  none  hut  knowledge:  and  neither  freedom,  vir- 
tue, nor  knowledge  has  any  vigor  or  immortal  hope, 
except  in  the  principles  of  the  Christian  faith,  u 
of  the  <  'hristian  religion." 
1  wish  i  i,  with  all  the  emphasis  of  which 

I  am  capable,  my  veneration  and  gratitude  for  I 

QOble  men,  and   for  the   ty] f  rational,  manly,  and 

tender  piety  which  they  have  left  i  31  not  in- 

sult their  memory  by  a  su  1  of  apology;  by 

arguing  whether  they,  or  those  who  ha. 

to  follow  their  Lead,  are  to  be  vouchsafed  the  honor 
of  the  Christian  name.  Small  honor  to  that  name,  if 
they  disclaim  it  or  are  deprived  of  it  I 

There  are  two  Borts  of  people  who  do  them  and  the 
movement  they  represent  a  great  injustice:  th< 
other  :  at  a  distance,  who  fancy  something  in 

II  cold,  haughty,  and  exclusive;  and  the  liberals  of  a 

younger  day,  who   think   with  a  certain  lofty  disdain 

of  its  strict  and  austei  rvatism.     But  to  those 

of  my  own  generation  the  life  that  was  in  its 

gave  the  very  mother's  milk  on  which  we  were  nur- 
tured; and  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  it  without  a 
certain  filial  tenderness.     Nay,  such  is  the  fi  i 


42  NEW  ENGLAND   UNLTARIANISM. 

reverent  habit,  I  am  apt  to  think  that  Christianity, 
in  all  its  ages  of  evolution,  and  in  all  its  numberless 
forms,  has  never  taken  a  type  at  once  so  free  from 
ecclesiastical  pressure,  and  in  itself  so  manly,  sweet, 
and  noble.  A  faith  which  expressed  itself  in  the 
ideal  thought  of  Channing,  the  Consolations  and 
Hymns  of  Greenwood,  the  tender  wisdom  of  Ephraim 
Peabody ;  a  personal  piety  whose  profession  and  aim 
were  the  "  Formation  of  the  Christian  Character ; "  a 
charity  which  created  the  Fraternity  of  Churches, 
and  has  made  itself  felt  for  fifty  years  in  the  tone 
and  pattern  of  every  good  work  done  in  that  com- 
munity, —  these  may  very  well  challenge  comparison 
with  anything  its  critics  have  to  show ;  and  may 
very  well  make  those  of  us  who  think  we  have  out- 
grown it  pause  to  consider  whether,  for  a  generation 
or  two  at  any  rate,  we  are  likely  to  find  anything  so 
good  to  take  its  place. 


III. 

CHANNING 

IT  was  the  great  felicity  of  T'nitarinni>m   in   this 
country  to  1"'  represented  for  twenty-fii 
by  the  pure  and  eminent  name  of  William  EUery 
Channing.      [f  anything  oonld  possibly  disarm  the 
lity   of  sectarian    prejudice,   if  anything  could 
possiMy  enlist  th<  mate  pride  and  Loyalty  of 

i\   i  t  which  he  was  the  acknowled 
it  would  be  the  elevated  plane  of  thought,  the 

■   ;  loquence,  the 

piety,  the  transparent  puri 

later  life  to  an  intrepid  vigor,  the  oded  de- 

votion to  the  highest  order  of  truth,  of  this 
ler. 
I   use  these   words  with   careful  deliberation     I 
bave  not  myself  always  felt  in  la  I 

now  in  deliberate  review,  his  real  intellectual 

The  holder  temper,  the  ning,  the 

scientific  habit,  the   intense!   political   passion,  the 
restless  speculation,   of  the   period   that   hafl    | 
since  his  death,  all  serve  to  hide  from  us  the  grandeur 

■  work  he  dill,  and  its  indisp 
educating  the  very  best  qualities  of  mind  and 
on  which  we  have  to  rely  for  the  work  most  needed 
in  the  future. 


44  CHANNING. 

For  his  own  personality  was  not  aggressive  and 
commanding,  as  that  of  most  other  men  of  equal 
eminence.  It  was  by  persuasion  and  not  impression 
—  by  pressure  (as  Dr.  Bellows  once  finely  said  of 
him)  and  not  by  blows  —  that  he  made  his  deep  mark 
on  his  own  generation  and  on  ours.  Each  single 
quality  of  an  intellectual  leader,  taken  by  itself, 
might  seem  to  be  wanting  in  him.  In  all  his  writ- 
ings it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  daring  thought  or  a 
brilliant  phrase.  His  own  small  communion  has 
produced  or  included  much  more  learned  scholars, 
men  of  much  deeper  and  broader  speculative  grasp, 
preachers  of  far  greater  brilliancy,  fervor,  fancy,  elo- 
quence, and  popular  pulpit  power,  bolder  and  more 
radical  thinkers  in  the  direction  either  of  scientific 
criticism  or  moral  reform.  Of  the  many  eminent 
names  belonging,  by  nature  or  adoption,  to  the  Uni- 
tarian pulpit  of  New  England,  several  have  made 
their  mark  in  some  one  direction,  and  perhaps  more, 
sharper  and  deeper  than  Channing  did,  but  none  of 
them  near  so  broadly.  Xone  of  them  would  be  once 
thought  of — with  the  single  exception  of  Theodore 
Parker  —  as  having  left  the  distinct  impression  of  his 
mind  upon  a  religious  or  intellectual  movement,  to 
which  he  had  given  tone  and  character ;  none  of 
them,  with  that  exception,  would  be  once  thought  of 
as  the  recognized  and  unchallenged  chief  of  such  a 
movement. 

That  distinction  is  allowed,  in  our  religious  history, 
unquestioned  and  ungrudged,  to  Channing  alone. 
And,  as  I  said,  I  think  it  is  justified  by  the  most 
critical  and  deliberate  judgment  of  the  case.     But  to 


HIS   EARLY    LIFE.  45 

make  it  appear  just  to  those  who  were  strangers  to 
the  movement,  in  the  absence  of  almost  all  those  sa- 
lient points  which  most  easily  catch  the  distant  eye, 
it  is  necessary  to  consider  with  some  attention  the 
man  himself,  and  the  circumstances  of  his  time. 

The  life  of  Dr.  Channing  extends  just  over  sixty- 
two  years,  from  L780  to  L842.  Bis  childhood  was 
spent  at  Newport,  Rhode  [aland,  where  his  mind  re- 

I  a  very  serious  bent  from  thi  I 
and  godly  old  Calvinist,  Dr.  II  . '.:   -       wh    ■   name 
is  best  known  from  his  famous  tenet,  that  the  true 

i  fitness  to  I"-  Baved  is  willingness  to  be  damned 
for  the  glory  of  God     By  thai  e 
the  name  "  Bopkinsian "  has  been  i 
tarian  tradition  to  this  day.     The  boy  Channing  was 
little  of  pel  Qtle  and  serious  of  temper ;  vet  one 

story  is  told,  to  his  credit,  of  a  time  when  that  gentle 
temper  flamed  out  into  wrath,  and  into  something  of 
a  Bchool-boy   fight,   I    believe,  in   defi  Bome 

younger  comrade  No  one  who  saw  him  in  man- 
hood would  suspect  that  he  had  i  n  capable 
of  wrath.     That  one  flash  of  it  was  a  symptom  of 

mora]    health. 

His  walks  by  the  beach,  and  the  Fresh  wind  and 
rolling  surge  of  the  Atlantic,  did  a  good  deal,  he 
to  nurture  a  certain  dreamy  and  devout  sympathy 

with  nature:  his  spiritual  horizon,  all  through  his 
life,  kept  always  that  level  width.  Excepting  this, 
and  a  native  sensitiveness  of  organization  almost 
feminine,  there  was  little  to  distinguish  him  at  twenty 

—  little,  that  is,  of  native  genius  or  intellectual  force 

—  from  a  goodly  number  of  serious,  generous,  and 


46  CHANGING. 

cultivated  young  men  who  graduate  year  by  year 
from  our  American  colleges.  With  him  it  was,  with 
them  it  is,  a  pure,  high,  consecrated  aim. 

His  first  larger  experience  of  life  was  had  in 
Bichmond,  Virginia,  where,  I  imagine,  his  position  as 
teacher  helped  to  seclude  him  from  any  wide  range 
of  social  intercourse,  as  well  as  his  own  temper  of 
mind,  and  his  moral  repugnance  to  the  state  of  society 
there,  which  came  out  long  afterwards  in  his  hostility 
to  slavery.  But,  in  particular,  it  was  in  the  solitary 
reflection  of  these  years  that  he  quite  outgrew,  and 
firmly  renounced,  the  narrow  creed  of  his  youth, — 
or  what  there  was  narrow  in  it,  —  and  found  himself, 
intelligently  and  consistently,  in  the  ranks  of  liberal 
thinkers. 

I  should  say,  however,  that  the  process  with  him 
was  not  one  of  criticism,  hardly  of  investigation,  but 
an  even,  natural,  and  very  devout  religious  growth. 
Every  step  of  it  was  taken,  not  merely  with  anxious 
deliberation,  but  with  a  certain  tender,  solicitous,  re- 
morseful, conscientious,  pleading  piety  and  religious 
discipline  of  soul,  which  make  the  record  of  those 
years  like  the  record  of  old  saints  and  pietists.  The 
prospect  was  rather  that  of  a  morbid  introspective 
pietism,  than  of  a  manly,  courageous,  cheerful,  and 
healthy  religious  life,  which  it  afterwards  so  largely 
became. 

To  this  somewhat  hectic  experience  and  temper  of 
that  time  we  have  to  add  a  great  loss  of  bodily  health 
and  vigor  from  the  exposures  of  his  sea-voyage  home. 
Physically  he  was  never  a  robust  man,  never,  I  should 
suppose,  well  in  health,  after  those  years  of  his  stay 


IIIS    PERSONAL   TRAITS.  47 

in  Richmond  His  stature  was  small,  his  frame  at- 
tenuated, hifl  face  thin.  The  clear  wide  brow,  the 
great,  solemn,  wistful  eyes,  the  low,  melodious,  and 
flowing  Bpeech,  —  these  were  native  Lrifts  potent  to 
win  through  a  Btrong  and  Bweet  persuasion  ;  but  they 
were  united  in  him  with  a  physical  faulty  thai  might 
to  forbid  the  hope  of  any  serious  life-work,  and 
with  a  bodily  frame  thai  seemed  but  enough  to  cite 
again  the  words  of  Dr,  Bellows   to  anchor  hia  boo!  to 

Lltll. 

II    was  never  quite  an  invalid,  but  h<'  was  always 

a  valetudinarian.      In  particular,  he  had  a  singular 

old :  and  the  recollection  of  many 

Of  his  friends  will   recall  his  ]■!  a  the 

le  corner  of  his  warmly  sheltered  and  softly  fur- 
nished  room    Thai  90ft  and  warm  shell 
always  to  crave  and  need  as  mnch  a-  a  Bick  child 
What  to  a  in. pit   vigorous  man   would  be   indolent 

indulgence,  with  him  was  a  necessity  of  hie  and  the 
condition  of  any  working  1  1  liicnmatancee 

him,  through  all  his  working  and  declining  years,  this 

lary  shelter,  and  screened  him  from  the 
wind  of  the  world  by  the  surroundings  ami  the  com- 
forts of  sufficient  wealth.  lli>  virtue  lay  not  in 
manly  struggle  with  difficulty  and  hardship,  hut  in 
the  consecration  of  life-long  leisure  and  ample  oppor- 
tunity to  something  very   different    from   a   selfish 

luxury.      Be   had  as  little   of  the  Btorm   and  battle  of 

3  can  fall  to  any  Berious   man  to  encounter;  hut 

unrounded  always  by  the  respectful, affectionate, 

vigilant,  and  almost  too  obsequious  homage  and  love 

of  near  friends.      Ideally,   his   thought   took   in   the 


48  CHANNING. 

widest  sweep  of  duty  and  every  saored  sympathy 
and  homely  obligation  that  bind  man  to  his  kind : 
personally,  he  was  perplexed,  shrinking,  helpless,  in 
the  presence  of  any  one  of  the  rougher  tasks  that 
would  bring  him  face  to  face  with  coarse  suffering 
and  want.  The  sensitive,  womanly  temperament, 
with  the  self-consideration  that  in  an  invalid  becomes 
the  necessary  instinct  of  self-defence,  made  some  per- 
sons quick  and  harsh  to  judge  what  seemed  to  cross 
his  own  serious  pleadings  and  maxims  of  self-denial ; 
but  no  person  was  ever  brought  very  near  to  him, 
who  went  for  sympathy  or  counsel,  or  in  simple 
friendship,  that  did  not  bear  the  same  testimony  to 
the  infinite  sweetness,  elevation,  serenity,  the  abso- 
lute freedom  from  personal  passion  and  desire,  which 
were  the  root  of  his  extraordinary  moral  power. 

For  a  very  genuine  and  great  moral  power  this 
tenderly  nurtured  mind  became,  and  is  felt  to  this 
day  —  warm,  life-generating,  springlike  —  among  all 
the  more  turbulent  forces  that  play  upon  the  world. 
The  process,  too,  by  which  it  grew  to  this  great  spirit- 
ual predominance  and  power  was  as  gentle  and  patient 
as  the  spring  growth  in  which  its  buds  began  to 
swell.  Somewhere  about  the  age  of  thirty  his  name 
began  to  win  upon  the  public  ear  as  a  preacher  of 
singular  fervor  and  beauty  of  utterance,  along  with 
the  more  brilliant  reputation  of  Buckminster,  then  at 
its  height.  It  is  not  easy  to  describe,  though  it  is 
perhaps  not  very  difficult  to  imagine,  the  manner  and 
gifts  that  won  their  way  so  surely.  In  his  own  place 
in  the  Federal  Street  pulpit  I  heard  him  only  once, 
and  saw  him  only  once  or  twice  besides,  —  barely 


AS   A    PREACHES.  4'.' 

enough  to  verity  the  impression  which  others  have 
recorded.     From  the  stilted  and  awkward  height   of 
that  old-fashioned  lofty  mahogany  pulpit,  with  it 
balu8traded  flights  of  Btairs,  his  f  ted  down, 

it  might  be  Baid  without  •  /ion,  like  the 

of  an  angel,  and  his  voice  floated  down  like  a  voice 
from  higher  spheres.     1   cannot  think  of  any  other 

her  of  those  who  can  fairly  be  called  popular,  to 
whom  that  distant  altitude,  bo  Lifting  him  away  from 
his  congregation,  might  be  called  even  a  positive 
help,  as  it  aeemi  •  with  him. 

Dr.  <  Shanninj '  i  and 

fcion, — clear,  melodious,  flowi  ;ly  plain- 

curiously  to  catch  and  win  upon  the  hear- 

•  mpathy  :  its  melody  and  pathos  in  tl. 
of  a  hymn  were  alone  a  charm  that  might  bring  men 
to  the  listening,  like  the  attraction  ol  music 

oft. Mi,  too,  when  the  Bigns  of  physical  frailty  were 
apparent,  it  might  be  Baid  that  1.  ;i  was  watched 

and  waited  for  with  that  Bort  of  hush,  as  if  one  were 
waiting  t<>  catch   hi-  rthly  worda      All  the 

Strength   that  was    in  the   man  went   out  from   him  in 

pure  spiritual  fervor  and  uplifting  moral  force  Any 
b  that  could  I.,-  called  eloquent,  or  any  eloquence 
that  could  he  called  popular,  could  not  possibly  have 
depended  less  than  his  on  what  are  commonly  re- 
garded as  oratorical  gifts;  rnU\,\  not  possibly  have 
more  than  hia  in  the  qualities  which  make 
a  pure,  disembodied,  spiritual  radiance. 

It    follow-    directly    from  this,  that    that    power 
could    not  have  I  >uld   n<>i   have 

been    developed,    in    a    resisting    medium.      It    was 

4 


50  CHANNING. 

the  great  felicity  of  Dr.  Charming's  experience,  that 
early  in  life  he  found  his  place  in  a  sphere  which 
offered  no  hindrance,  but  rather  invited  out  and  wel- 
comed just  those  qualities  in  which  he  was  afterwards 
so  distinguished.  His  people  included  what  was  very 
best  of  the  serious,  devout,  conscientious,  liberal- 
minded  who  made  the  finest  type  of  early  Unitarian- 
ism.  As  a  sculptor  would  wish  to  work  in  marble  of 
the  purest  waxen  lustre,  as  a  musician  would  wish  to 
compose  for  instruments  of  the  finest  tone,  so  there 
were  men  and  women  in  that  company  whom  it 
would  be  such  a  preacher's  highest  joy  and  privilege 
to  win  towards  the  higher  life.  A  spirit  "  is  not  finely 
touched  but  to  fine  issues."  The  inspiring,  sympa- 
thetic touch  may  come  first  from  the  speaker,  but  it 
must  go  back  to  him  from  the  hearer,  warm  and 
quick,  before  the  speaker  can  become  an  orator, — 
which  word  means,  not  a  declaimer,  but  one  who 
pleads  with  power  and  effect.  Such  effective  plead- 
ing, on  the  plane  of  high,  pure,  passionless,  spiritual 
truth,  made  the  rare  pulpit  power  of  Dr.  Channing ; 
and  it  was  a  power  which  largely  grew  from  the  har- 
mony which  he  found,  or  made,  in  the  atmosphere  of 
the  place  where  his  voice  was  heard. 

It  may  be  reckoned  ten  years  of  professional  life 
before  his  name  began  to  be  known  publicly  as  a 
leader  in  religious  thought ;  and  again  fifteen  more, 
before  it  began  to  be  heard  in  a  wider  sphere,  —  as 
it  was  for  about  ten  years,  —  in  the  discussion  of  the 
gravest  questions  of  morals  and  politics.  So  that  his 
professional  life  has  three  stages,  —  as  preacher,  as 
theologian,  and  as  reformer. 


STAGES   OF   HIS   WORK.  51 

It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  criticise  or  di 
the  work  of  these  three  periods.     That  of  the 
in  particular,  would  probably  be  found  to  be  the  I 
ment  of  the  ordinary  pulpit  topics,  —  the  nurture  of 
Christian  piety,  and  the  religious  discipline  of  life,  — 
distinguished  from  other  m  ther  by  tone  than 

ince.    The  work  of  the  later  periods  I 
part  to  the  general  history  oi  i  is  thought 

Qominational  annul-,  and  to  that  of  the  broader 
moral  movements  of  the  day,  —  education,  peace,  tem- 
perance, and  antislavery.    To  turn  rapidly  the  | 
of  that  noble  half-century  volume  in  which  his  dis- 
as  of  those  matl  gathered,  along  with 

a  lit -r  fruitage  of  his  life,  would  give  a  fairer 

view  than  any  critical  summing  up  of  the  ran- 

measure  of  his  power.    There  is,  h  ew  to 

[en  of  his  work  which  is  quite  necessary  to  un- 
aid  tla-  peculiar  place  it  holds  in  our  id.. 
development,  and  especially  to  Bhow  how  ii 

with  what  went  before  and  after  in  the  par- 
ticular movement  of  thought  to  which  that  work 
beloD 

Of  his  gifts  purely  personal  I  have   Bpoken,  perhaps 

ii,  already.     But  there  are  two  thin_~. 

that  are    wry  < -hai  his   mind,  and   that  in 

their  combination  seem  b  fine  the  natu 

the  movement  of  which  he  was  bo  eminent  a  Leader. 

The  first  was  a  <■  /•'//'•■  n  and  aim 
moral  evil.     This  "conviction  of  sin"  was  quite  as 
genuine  a  fruit  as  any  from  the  stern  old  Caivinistic 
stock  out  of  which  his  own  faith  grew.     It  differed 
however  in  him,  very  widely,  from  the  two  forms  in 


52  CHANNING. 

which  it  is  most  commonly  found,  and  which  are  ap- 
pealed to  by  religionists  generally  with  most  emphasis 
and  effect. 

That  sort  of  conversion,  or  religious  crisis,  of  which 
Augustine's  is  the  most  famous  and  Bunyan's  the 
most  familiar  type,  could  never  have  been  the  ex- 
perience of  Channing.  It  was  when  he  was  still  a 
child  that  he  quite  outgrew,  on  one  side  at  least,  his 
liability  to  that  great  shock  and  catastrophe  of  relig- 
ious fear.  He  had  heard  a  sermon  on  the  terrors  of 
the  Lord,  which  to  his  childish  mind  seemed  to  wrap 
life  all  around,  and  the  bright  world  itself,  in  gloom 
and  dread  :  surely,  he  thought,  if  this  is  true,  none  of 
us  can  ever  smile  again.  But  his  father,  who  was  a 
serious  man,  seemed  to  feel  none  of  this  alarm,  and 
his  cheerful  unconcern,  with  his  excellent  appetite 
at  dinner,  gave  the  boy  at  first  a  shock  like  jesting 
at  a  funeral ;  but  soon  convinced  him,  once  for  all, 
that  the  whole  thing  was  unreal  and  untrue.  The 
grave  sense  of  evil,  the  real  "  conviction  of  sin,"  was 
not  diminished ;  but,  happily  for  that  clear  con- 
science and  sensitive  organization,  it  never  lay,  to 
his  thought,  against  that  lurid  background  of  a  uni- 
verse of  horror. 

It  was  impossible,  too,  that  his  dreamy,  meditative 
boyhood,  the  simple  purity  of  his  country  life,  the 
high  and  devout  temper  of  thought  so  early  trained, 
should  ever  be  made  the  groundwork  of  the  keen  self- 
reproach,  the  passionate  remorse,  the  agonized  inward 
struggle,  which  with  so  many  men  of  saintly  virtue 
have  been  the  narrow  gateway  of  the  higher  life.  It 
must  have  been  a  calm  ascent,  and  not  a  sharp  con- 


HIS  OF    MORAL   KVIL. 

flirt  against  spiritual  foes  that  beset  the  climbing. 
That  life  was  from  the  first  a  process,  a  culture,  a 
growth,  —  not  a  warfare,  a  fighl 

step    in  advance  is    in    - 
coiim'.  something,  the  impression  i. 

it,  and  the  Lesson  he  would  always 
method  calm,  even,  and  natural.     I  do  oot  rem<  : 
that  lie  hints  anywhere  at  a  knowledge  or  an  un- 
ritua]  conflict,  Bach  as  one  \ 
to   whom   that   conflict    bad   been    ■• 
What  k  "f  intensity,  of  1 1  j  *  -  deeper  Bprii 

moral  power,  has  been  found  in  1.  r  writings 

genuine  expn 
of  a  religious  nurture  Bingularly  passionless  and 
and  so  the  more  chars 
and  power. 

A:        b  iin,  that  convict!  u  was  not  intensi- 

fied, as  it  is  with  many,  by  the 

-  or  Buf  unong  men.     His  ex] 

life'  was  in  the  main  placid,  secluded,  uneventful     It 
me  contrast  it"  we  think  of  it  in  connec- 
tion with  the  .stern  Calvinism  Inflicted  <>n  I 
and  sensitive  temper  of  the  poet   i  l>v  John 

rlier  life  had  been  B] 
of  a  slave-ship.     I  H   slavery,  with 

and  wrongs,  Channing  di  I  iew  in 

Iroix  ;  and  these  lay  always  close  and  I 
upon  his  conscience.  But  even  thea — and,  i 
more,  the  inhumanity  mine,  hos- 

pital, or  prison  —  lay  in  his  mind  not  bo  much  as 
vivid  pictures  of  wrong  inflicted  and 
dured,  but  rather  as  the  shadow,  intense  and  d< 


54  CHANNING. 

quality  but  very  dim  in  outline,  which  darkened  his 
broad  and  generous  idealizings  of  human  life. 

He  saw  the  particular  fact,  when  his  mind  dwelt 
upon  it  at  all,  in  its  broad  relations.  The  right 
thing  was  a  spot  of  color,  and  the  wrong  thing  a  spot 
of  gloom,  in  a  wide  landscape,  which  he  looked  at 
somewhat  vaguely  (as  one  might  if  a  little  near- 
sighted), more  with  a  poet's  emotion  than  with  an 
artist's  eye.  That  keen  and  troubled  sense  of  a  deep 
reality  in  what  human  life  displays  of  evil  was  al- 
ways with  him,  —  if  nothing  more,  at  least  as  a  dim 
background  to  relieve  his  far  more  vivid  conception 
of  spiritual  truth  and  right.  But  the  action  of  his 
imagination  upon  the  facts  and  forms  that  made  up 
the  picture  was  brooding  and  slow.  So  far  as  it  af- 
fected his  appeals  and  efforts  in  behalf  of  goodness, 
it  was  more  in  a  vague,  general  way,  to  deepen  the 
tone,  quicken  the  motive,  and  give  distinct  sense  of 
elevation  to  the  religious  life,  than  to  intensify  it  by 
the  passion  and  the  dread  of  sin.  So  that  here,  too, 
a  certain  breadth  and  placidity,  rather  than  vehe- 
mence and  depth,  mark  the  quality  of  his  power. 

It  is  only  against  some  opposing  evil  that  any  form 
of  goodness  can  be  felt,  as  motive  or  as  fact.  It  is 
only  as  violation  of  the  highest  good  our  minds  can 
know,  that  we  really  feel  the  dread  and  power  of 
wrong.  The  Calvinistic  scheme,  which  Channing 
was  taught  in  his  youth,  gave  a  very  keen  sense  of 
sin,  in  the  soul  or  in  the  world,  as  enmity  and  rebel- 
lion against  the  sovereignty  of  God.  To  us  that 
phrase  has  become  a  figure  of  speech,  —  a  symbol, 
covering  a  relation  of  right  and  wrong  which  we  can 


DIGNITY   OF   HUMAN    ffATUBE. 

see  better,  or  think  we  can,  under  a  different  sort  of 
symbol. 

The  religious  terror,  almost  we  might  eve: 
religious  awe,  before  God  as  sovereign  and  judgi 
greatly  faded  from  the  mind  of  a  generation  t: 
to  think  of  him  as  Father  rather  than 
Comforter  rather  than  Judgi       S     .     other  op] 
must  be  conceived,  ovi 
tions,  and  wrongs  of  lit'";  •  or  religii 

slides  towards  a  futile  Optimism  on  the  od,  or 

a  gloomy  Fatalism  on  the  other.     Our  iu<ir:d 

ime   point    of    resistance  and   relief     The 

majesty  of  <; Inesa  may  not  1"'  a-  "awful"  to  our 

:it  as  it  was  to  Milton's,  who  makes  the  King 
of  Darkness  quail  before  it,  —  though  only  for  a  mo- 
ment Bui  at  least  that  majesl  thing 
real,  something  that  can  be  set  in  conti 
against  our  human  degradation, guilt,  and  pain.  This 
upward  look,  this  i  lining 
force,  Channing  found  in  his  favorite  doctrin 
tlir  dignity  <>f  human  nature.  This  topic  more  than 
any  other  made  the  burden  of  his  preaching,  and  t he 
centra]  point,  from  which  lie  reached  out  towards  the 
Right  he  upheld  on  one  side,  or  the  Wrong  he  at- 
tacked on  the  other. 

It  is  to  he  observed  that  this  idealizing  view  of  Ids, 
this  profound,  lively,  and   -  of  the  d ;. 

of  human   nature,    is  quite  SS   much   0] 

view  which  pessimists  and  cynics  have  made  pain- 
fully familiar  in  our  day,  as  it  is  to  the  austere  and 
dreadful  conviction  of  the  divine  judgments,  which 
marked  the  theology  of  a  former  time.      This  new 


56  CHANNING. 

gospel  of  Humanity  —  remote  alike  from  religious 
terror  and  irreligious  contempt  —  made  the  very  spe- 
cial burden  of  Channing's  message  to  his  generation. 
The  dignity  of  human  nature  he  elevated  into  a  reli- 
gious dogma,  as  with  himself  it  was  an  inspiration 
and  a  creed.  How  far  it  consisted  with  the  facts  of 
human  nature  was  no  more  his  care,  than  how  far 
the  facts  of  human  life  consist  with  the  moral  provi- 
dence of  God.  "  So  much  the  worse  for  the  facts." 
At  any  rate,  those  facts  were  screened  from  his  eye 
— at  least,  greatly  softened  and  dimmed  in  outline — 
by  the  peculiar  seclusion  which  sheltered  while  it 
developed  his  religious  life. 

The  growth  was  healthy,  not  morbid ;  vigorous,  if 
not  robust,  —  whether  by  virtue  or  in  spite  of  that 
still  seclusion.  What  I  have  called  the  "gospel  of 
humanity,"  announced  in  the  pure  tone  and  with  the 
earnest  conviction  native  to  him,  made,  more  than 
any  other  word  that  has  been  spoken  to  this  century, 
the  religious  creed  of  the  finest,  broadest,  deepest 
minds.  It  retained  from  the  first  dispensation  of 
Christianity  all  its  fervor,  its  purity,  its  sweetness ; 
it  caught  from  modern  life  its  instinct  of  justice,  its 
wider  social  sympathies,  its  warm  and  lively  hope  of 
a  coming  victory  of  natural  and  inalienable  right. 

Above  all,  where  the  contrast  shows  strongest 
against  the  earlier  creed,  it  was  a  generous  faith.  It 
was  full  of  a  noble  confidence  in  man's  nature  and 
destiny,  full  of  a  noble  sympathy  with  what  is  best 
in  all  forms  of  natural  goodness,  full  of  a  noble  aspir- 
ation towards  a  better  earthly  future  for  man  and  the 
redress  of  all  evils  in  societv,  as  well  as  the  victories 


RINEL 

of  conscience  in  the  soul     And  it  was  a   form   of 
modern  piety  all  the  more  Btrongly  marked  in  him, 
because  relieved  against  that  earnest  and  sincei 
dreadful  and  implacable,  belief  from  which  the  reli- 
gions experience  of  his  early  yean  bad  set  him  I 

The  thought  has  been  made  quite  too  familiar  to 
part  of  the  peculiar  gospel  of  our  time,  to 
dwelling  on  here.  But  it  may  be  worth  while  to 
notice,  very  briefly,  how  from  this  central  position 
Dr.  Channing  met  and  did  those  tasks  which  have 
made  his  nam<  mown,  and  given  it  the  n 

influence. 

There  are,  first,  three  or  four  discourses  of  I  toctrine, 
—  the  same  which  made  him  the  unchallenged  and 
even  revered  leader  of  his  own  religious  body.  The 
event  which  more  than  any  other  gave  them  the  cour- 
age of  their  convictions  and  confidence  in  their  future, 
was  when  in  Baltimore,  in  L819,  he  took  up  one  by 
one,  in  calm  and  deliberate  attack,  the  Beries  of  opin- 
ions by  which  Orthodox  is  distinguished  from  Libera] 
Christianity.  It  was  not  in  the  way  of  learned,  criti- 
cholarly  discussion  :  that  he  left  to  men  other- 
wise qualified  and  gifted  It  was  simply  in  the 
of  eloquent,  fervent,  elevated  appeal  against  the  wrong 
clone  to  the  character  of  <  rod,  the  blight  put  upon  the 
lit'.'  of  man,  by  a  scheme  so  full   as  he  regarded  i 

unreason,   inhumanity,   and   gloom.      The   deliv 

this  discourse  was  an  event,  because  it  publicly  en- 

;  the  most  eloquent,  best  known,  and  mosl  hon- 
ored minister  of  Boston  on  the  one  aide  as  against  the 
other:  because  it  did  mow  ^han  any  other  one  thing 
to  crystallize  the  forces  and  convictions  of  the  liberal 


58  CHAXNING. 

party  among  New  England  Congregationalists,  then 
only  beginning  to  be  known  as  Unitarians. 

To  what  might  be  called  the  speculative  side  of 
this  movement  Channing  did  not  make  any  very  dis- 
tinct contribution  of  thought.  His  sympathies  were 
large  and  liberal ;  his  opinions  in  matters  of  theology 
were  simply  the  common  thought  of  the  more  serious, 
devout,  conservative  of  those  who  had  outgrown  the 
ancient  creed.  His  intellectual  method  wTas  a  firm 
but  gentle  dogmatism.  Eeligious  truth  with  him 
was  more  a  matter  of  contemplation  than  of  study  or 
clear  definition.  Natural  or  critical  science  he  knew 
very  little  about.  He  was  content  with  great  vague- 
ness of  view,  provided  the  religious  want  of  his  mind 
was  fairly  met.  Thus  he  hovered  always  on  the  edge 
of  an  Arianism  in  which  a  soberer  thinker  would 
hardly  find  rest  or  satisfaction ;  and  was  content  to 
say  that  we  know  too  little  about  the  ultimate  nature 
of  matter  to  criticise  the  story  of  the  Ascension.  His 
strong  points  were  not  these;  but  those  wide  and 
generous  views  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  the  Brother- 
hood of  Man,  the  Dignity  of  Human  Nature,  the  Free 
Communion  of  the  ideal  Church,  which  made  the 
theme  of  discourse  in  several  volumes  of  eloquent  and 
noble  sermons,  and  constitute  still  the  best  body  of 
practical  divinity  that  the  Unitarian  movement  in 
this  country  has  produced. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  these  labors,  and  in  the 
second  period  (as  I  have  called  it)  of  his  public  life, 
that  he  sounded  the  first  distinct  note  of  that  prac- 
tical Christian  philanthropy  with  which  his  name 
has  been  most  widelv  and  honorably  connected,  in  a 


CHRISTIAN    PHILANTHROPY. 

sermon  on  that  most  sacred  and  beneficent  mission 
among  the  poor   began  by  his  near  friend,  J 
Tuckerman     This  has  been  the  most  chara  * 
the  best  organized,  and  by  Car  the  m 

co-operative  work  that  the  Unitarian  I 
attempted  by  way  of  Church  action.      P 
ning'a  woid  did  as  much  as  any  man's  to  dignify  and 
endear  it  in  the  heart  of  its  munil; 
this  day,  a  little  less  than  fifty 
1       :n  this  tli*-   Btep 

Te in perance  and  Education  which  now  began  to 
themselves  in  ;  and  from  tl  in  to 

those  which  lay  upon  the  border  line  of  m 
politics, —  namely,  War  and  S  itand 

main  line  of  argument  with  which   he  would 
approach  such  topics  as  these  may  easily  en  ugh  be 

taken  for  gnu  I  know   hi 

cast  of  thought     Happily  for  him,  the  pub] 
had  not  become  so  roused  and  jealous  regarding 
of  them  as  it  has  been  since;  and  though  there 
some  tment 

perhaps,  yet  tl  not  the  angry  hostility  which 

ev<  :i  the  gentlest  word   on  some  of  these  m 
would  have  been  sure  to  provoke  a  fev 

But  the  subject  which  I  have   named  last  de& 
more    special   mention:    partly  I  'han- 

ning's  day  slavery  has  gone  through  its 

Stormy  end  ;  and  partly  because  without  it,  and 
the  part  he  bore  in  it,  though  we  might  have  known 

the  beauty,  fervor,  and  elevation  of  his  charact- ■: 
we  should  not  have  known  its  moral   manliness,  de- 
termination, and  strength. 


60  CHANNING. 

It  was  slowly,  and  in  a  sense  reluctantly,  that 
one  of  his  temper  was  drawn  to  take  part  in  a  dis- 
cussion of  such  wide  public  issues,  and  to  identify 
himself — he,  in  his  gentle  seclusion,  and  well  past 
the  prime  of  his  years  —  with  a  party  whose  methods 
he  strongly  dissented  from,  whose  uncompromising 
creed  he  never  adopted,  and  whose  appeal  to  passion 
he  deeply  dreaded  and  condemned.  For  some  six  or 
eight  years  the  antislavery  movement  had  been  under 
way.  Its  principle  of  abstract  justice,  its  resolution, 
its  intrepid  courage  he  admired,  and  he  had  submitted 
to  some  mild  censure  because  he  did  not  openly  take 
its  ground. 

The  event  that  brought  him  to  the  front,  and  made 
him  afterwards  the  most  intellectually  eminent  leader 
of  that  movement,  was  the  death  of  Lovejoy,  shot  in 
defending  his  press  at  Alton,  Illinois,  in  1837.  A 
citizens'  meeting  was  called  at  Faneuil  Hall,  to  speak 
the  word  and  rally  the  courage  of  men  alarmed  at  the 
character  of  the  struggle,  and  especially  at  what  so 
threatened  the  freedom  of  public  debate.  Public 
opinion  set  very  strongly  then,  and  was  as  strong  in 
Boston  as  anywhere,  against  any  discussion  of  the 
right  and  wrong  of  slavery.  The  Attorney- General 
of  Massachusetts  volunteered  on  the  platform  to  at- 
tack the  movement  in  very  bitter  and  offensive  terms. 
It  was  at  this  speech  that  Wendell  Phillips,  then  with 
all  his  brilliant  oratorical  gifts  a  young  man  compara- 
tively unknown,  sprang  to  the  floor,  where  his  speech 
gleamed  like  flashes  of  lightning  across  the  stormy 
debate,  and  at  one  bound  took  his  place  at  the  very 
head  of  platform  orators,  which  he  has  held,  unchal- 


WRITINGS    ON    SLAVERY.  Gl 

lenged,  ever  since.  To  those  who  were  there  (as  I 
have  heard  it  described),  it  was  an  apparition  more 
splendid  than  any  transformation  scene  upon  the  stage. 
On  the  same  occasion  Dr.  Channing,  with  a  plr. 
hardihood  he  had  perhaps  never  shown  before,  stood 
side  by  side  upon  the  platform  with  Garrison  and 
other  antdsla very  leaders  whose  method  lie  had  con- 
demned, but  in  whom  he  now  saw  the  champii 
that  freedom  of  speech  which  must  be  upheld,  he 
thought,  by  all  good  men. 

This  act  identified  him  at  once  with  the  prim 
of  that  party,  though   not  with  its  method  or  dor- 
trine.     It  enli  peat  amount  of  moral  sympathy 
and  support  to  the  moi  and  it  committed  him 
to  the  discussion,  which  he  followed  up  in  Bix  or 
eight  of  the  most  labored  and  &  his 
life.     A  brief  treatise  on  Slavery,  dealing  with  it 
purely  on  grounds  of  moral  argument  ;  a  public 
of  sympathy  to  Mr.  Birney,  then  the  standard-1 
of  the  Abolition  party  in  politics;  a  letter  to  Mr.  ( 'lay 

on  the  annexation  of  Texas,  which  the  writer  thought 

cause  enough  to  justify  disunion  :   a  letter  on  Mr. 
Clay's  political  position;  a  tract  on  Emancipation ; 
and  an  argument  on  the  duty  of  the  Free  81  I 
this  was  the  Beries  of  writings  which  made  Channing, 

in  his  later  years,  the  best  known  exponent  of  the 
growing  hostility  to  slavery.  Something  of  popu- 
larity and  something  of  comfort  he  doubtless  for- 
feited; but  to  one  of  his  temper  that  was  a  very 
small  thing,  and,  sheltered  as  he  was  in  a  thousand 
ways,  could  not  have  touched  him  \  rly.     The 

obloquy  and   the   personal    danger   were   for  hardier 


62  CHANNING. 

fighters  in  the  field.  His  glory  was,  that  he  was 
content  to  share  their  reproach,  and  that  with  steady- 
fidelity  he  served  an  unpopular  cause  which  he 
thought  right.  At  least,  if  his  sensitive  nature  felt 
keenly  (as  it  did  sometimes)  the  coldness  and  the 
unpardoning  prejudice  of  former  friends,  the  world 
at  large  was  not  allowed  to  know  that  he  suffered ; 
and  this,  too,  was  more  than  made  up  by  the  honor 
widely  paid  to  his  integrity  and  courage. 

Years  came  upon  him  while  his  thought  was  still 
fresh  and  clear,  and  his  temper  unclouded  by  infirm- 
ity or  pain.  Some  one  asked  him  what  he  thought 
the  pleasantest  time  of  life.  "  About  sixty-two,"  he 
answered,  cheerily.  A  few  weeks  later,  October  2, 
1842,  it  was  his  great  privilege  to  pass  away,  almost 
painlessly,  from  an  attack  of  autumn  fever,  —  the 
sunset  of  his  life  as  calm  and  radiant  as  its  sunshine 
had  always  been.  His  last  public  act  was  an  address 
in  memory  of  West  India  Emancipation,  at  Lenox, 
two  months  before  his  death.  Its  closing  sentences 
are  as  fine  an  example  as  any,  both  of  his  style  of 
religious  eloquence,  and  of  that  fervent  hopefulness 
of  spirit  which  never  left  him:  — 

"  I  began  this  subject  in  hope,  and  in  hope  I  end.  I 
have  turned  aside  to  speak  of  the  great  stain  on  our  coun- 
try, which  makes  us  the  by-word  and  scorn  of  the  nations  ; 
but  I  do  not  despair.  Mighty  powers  are  at  work  in  the 
world.  Who  can  stay  them  1  God's  word  has  gone  forth, 
and  it  cannot  return  to  him  void.  A  new  comprehension 
of  the  Christian  spirit,  a  new  reverence  for  humanity,  a 
new  feeling  of  brotherhood  and  all  men's  relation  to  the 
common  Father,  —  this  is  among  the  signs  of  our  times. 


ADDRESS    AT    LENOX.  63 

We  see  it  :  do  we  not  feel  it  ]  Before  this,  all  oppressions 
are  to  fall.  Society,  silently  pervaded  by  this,  is  to  change 
its  aspect  of  universal  warfare  for  peace.  The  power  of 
lelfishnees,  all-grasping  and  seemingly  invincible,  is  to 
yield  to  this  divine  energy.  The  song  of  angels,  i  On 
earth  peace,1  will  not  always  sound  as  fiction. 

"0  come  thou  kingdom  of  heaven,  for  which  we  daily 
pray!     Come,  friend  and    saviour  of  the  nee,  who   didst 
shed  thy  blood  on  the  CI08B,  to  reconcile  man  to  man  and 
earth  to  heaven  !  Come,  ye  predicted  sgea  of  righteo  . 
and  love,  tn  which  the   faithful  have  so  trned  ! 

Come,  Father  almighty,  and  crown  with  thine  omnipo- 
tence the  homble  stri  I  thy  children  to  subvert  op- 

ii  and  wrong; 
and  joy,  the    truth    and    spirit  of    thy   Son,  through   the 
whole  earth  ! " 


IV. 
FIFTEEN  YEAES  OF  CONTROVERSY. 

WHAT  we  may  call  the  second  period  in  the 
history  of  Unitarianism  in  this  country  ex- 
tends from  the  year  1836,  which  showed  the  first  open 
breach  between  the  historical  and  the  spiritual  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity,  to  1860,  when  all  minor 
controversies  were  suspended  in  the  hush  of  waiting 
for  the  more  terrible  conflict  just  then  about  to 
begin. 

But  a  line  may  be  drawn  to  define  rather  more 
precisely  the  period  of  interior  conflict,  which  made 
these  years  so  critical  in  the  history  of  the  Unitarian 
movement.  It  happened  that  two  controversies,  which 
made  a  great  noise  at  the  time,  coincided  almost  ex- 
actly with  the  date  of  Channing's  death, — the  "  Pier- 
pont  controversy  "  (which  in  form  was  at  first  simply 
a  personal  dispute  respecting  the  legal  rights  of  a  min- 
ister, under  the  old  law  of  settlement,  as  against  his 
parish),  on  the  ground  of  Temperance  and  moral  re- 
form ;  and  the  "  Parker  controversy,''  on  the  ground 
of  Rationalism  and  theological  reform.  It  happened, 
again,  that  in  1857  some  sort  of  reconciliation  of  the 
two  hostile  methods  in  theology  was  attempted  in  the 
way  of  scientific  criticism,  in  the  "  Christian  Exam- 
iner," then  the  leading  journal  of  liberal  thought, 


ret:    -  w 

under  the  editorial  direction  of  Dr.  Hedge.     So  that, 
•  Bgardfl  the  interior  history  of  Unitarianistn  here, 
the  controversial  period  may  be  taken  ig  about 

fifteen  years. 

This,  however,  is  far  from  the  only,  r>r  even 

s  applied  to  the 
.  A   in  view.     What  has  lied    "  tl. 

controv.  the  half-century 

on  the  political  rights  and  mural  wrongs  of 
slavery  in  America, was  just  now  at  its  height.  The 
annexation  of  Texas  in  1845,  the  Mexican  war  which 
quickly  followed,  the  comprt 

the  fugitive  al  ol  •'  uri 

;.  the  K  e  in  18' 

ppalling  conflict  into  which 
all  passions  and  interests  were  drawn  for  tl. 
l  i  a  moral,  si .  ane 

a  national  question.     I:  had  frankly  upon  the 

field  of  politics  early  in  the  re  conai 

ing»  and  so  belonged  no  more  in  particular  to  the 
development  of  opinion  in  this  or  any  other  n 
body.     It  is  quite  accurate  enough  foi  our  purp 
then,  to  mark    ofif  these    fifteen 
18* 
within  the   Unitarian   body. 

But  I  will  go  back  for  a  moment, 
I  began  with, — about  the  time  immediately  be- 

fore the  outbreak  of  '  gical 

task  of  old  Unitarianism  was  done,  and  it  had 
or  -  to  have  working  faith.     The 

shocking  and  appalling  <  i  the  old  tl. 

v  it  had  removed  once  for  all.  for  us,  by  a  criti  ^  . 


66  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

not  very  searching  or  profound,  perhaps,  but  at  least 
quite  sufficient  for  its  task.  Things  painful  and  in- 
credible in  the  Biblical  record  it  had  either  explained 
away  in  good  faith,  or  unsuspectingly  ignored.  The 
critical  movement  had  gone  just  so  far,  that  our  the- 
ory of  Christianity  was  thus  absolutely  divested  of 
everything  that  shocked  the  conscience  or  common- 
sense  ;  while  its  hold  on  habitual  reverence,  and  faith 
in  its  special  sanction  and  authority  were  absolutely 
unimpaired.  The  immense  advantage  to  peace  of 
mind  and  strength  of  character  was  retained,  which 
consists  in  clinging  to  a  visible  symbol  honestly  be- 
lieved to  be  divine,  while  any  suspicion  of  weakness 
in  the  intellectual  foundation  was  left  for  future  find- 
ing out.  For  the  present,  there  was  the  tranquil  and 
grateful  sense  of  intellectual  rest. 

But  the  moment  of  intellectual  rest  is  only  a  mo- 
ment ;  then  comes  the  next  inevitable  step  of  intel- 
lectual advance.  I  say,  inevitable.  For  what  we 
call  rest,  in  living  things,  is  like  the  dead-point  of 
an  engine,  —  a  moment  of  balance,  broken  in  a  mo- 
ment by  the  same  play  of  the  machine  that  brought 
it  on.  What  we  call  motion  is  the  effort  which  the 
living  creature  makes  to  adjust  itself  to  changes  that 
come  about  not  by  its  choice  or  will,  —  changes  with- 
in, from  the  law  of  its  structure ;  changes  without, 
which  it  must  meet  Or  else  perish.  It  is  so  with  the 
simplest  vital  motions  ;  it  is  so,  too,  with  those  move- 
ments of  thought  which  affect  the  deepest  springs  of 
character,  belief,  or  hope,  and  which  we  call  religious. 
But  here  the  effort  to  meet  the  inevitable  change  is 
mqxe  than  a  vital  instinct :  it  is  often  a  struggle  to 


WARN  IN  67 

keep  one's  hold  on  a  faith  which  he  feels  slipping 
from  his  grasp ;  which,  if  he  let  it  go,  takes  with  it 
very  largely  the  best  comfort  and  blessing  of  his 
life. 

I  shall  not  pretend  to  do  again  what  has  been  done 
d  times  so  well  already,  —  to  trace  t 
of  those  inevitable  B  it  it  may  be  oba 

here,  that  the  instinct,  which  know 

dreads  the  impending  chan 
more  clearly  prophetic  than  that  brave  spirit,  loyal  to 

which  goes  blindfold,  as  it  were,  in  the  paths 
of  Providence.  The  forebodings  of  both  coward  and 
patrii  r  outdone  by  the  terrors  ol  tl     Wilder- 

ness, and  the  horrors  of  Andersonvill  I  those 
who  scouted  the  forebodinj  dtheutl 

of  them,  it  is  the  chief  honor  now  to 
i<wr>\  the  tenor  when  Happily  they  could 

oot  know  that  their  sanguine  hope  must  I 
at  bo  sore 

with  the  warnings  of  Orthodox  tors  or  timid 
friends  in  our  theological  domain ;  so  with  the 
guine   hop*'  that   hailed   the   fil  of  broadening 

light    We  were  warned  that  we  stood  on  the  perilous 
:  that  a  single  step  would  take  a  id  the 

recognized  boundai  hristian  faith.    There 

two  directions  in  which  that  Step  might  be  taken; 
and  each,  to  those  who  took  them,  seemed  vital  and 
necessary,  not  simply  innocent  and  sale.  The  trans- 
cendental free-thinker  was  sure  that  his  new  phi- 
losophy gave  him  a  better  ground  of  Christian  faith 
than  any  external  evidences  ;  the  liberal  critic  would 
only  relieve  Christianity  of  a  burden  and  an  encum- 


68  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF  CONTROVERSY. 

brance  that  still  hindered  its  free  course  to  victory. 
Both  were  conscious  alike  of  the  vast  interval  which 
separated  their  motive  from  that  of  the  Deistical 
movement,  of  evil  memory  to  them  both.  So  both 
disdained  the  warning;  both  overstepped  the  limit 
which  each  had  acknowledged  as  the  boundary  of 
Christianity  and  unbelief ;  and,  in  a  certain  way,  both 
have  entered  on  a  larger  heritage. 

The  first  shock  to  the  received  liberal  theology  of 
the  day,  I  should  be  inclined  to  say,  was  Professor 
Noyes's  argument  on  the  Messianic  interpretation  of 
the  prophecies,  in  1834;  and  the  next,  Professor 
Norton's  rejection,  on  grounds  part  speculative  and 
part  critical,  of  the  first  two  chapters  of  Matthew,  in 
1840.  That  is,  these  decisive  first  steps  were  taken 
by  deliberate,  conscientious,  conservative  scholars,  — 
the  best  and  soberest  scholars  we  had  to  show.  All 
the  rest,  we  may  say,  followed  as  matter  of  course. 
But  I  well  remember  the  mental  distress  felt  by  my 
beloved  and  honored  relative,  Henry  Ware,  Jr.,  at 
Mr.  Emerson's  superb  address  before  the  Divinity 
School  in  1838,  and  the  pain  with  which  he  listened 
to*  his  daughter's  reading  of  that  tender,  reverent, 
thoughtful  exposition  of  Dr.  Furness  touching  the 
apparition  of  angels  at  the  open  sepulchre.  These 
are  waymarks  and  memories  of  the  time  when  a  new 
departure  was  set  unmistakably  before  the  faithful 
and  grieved  eyes  of  the  good  men  who  still  abode  in 
the  former  ways.  As  to  the  course  that  has  been 
taken  since,  I  am  sure  that  I  speak  in  the  name  of  a 
good  many  who  have  followed  it  as  far  as  anybody, 
when  I  say  that  it  has  been  with  no  iconoclastic  zeal 


I  RAN  S C K N I ) EN I A L I S  M  :    ITS   BBG1 N  NING.  69 

and  with  no  sense  of  triumpli  over  a  decaying  .super- 
stition, but  with  deep  reluctance  and  nd  a 
great  sense  of  personal  loss,  that  they  have  felt  the 
ancient  supports  give  way  which  had  BUStaic 
much  integrity  of  life  and  vital  piety,  and  have  found 
themselves,  as  it  were,  in  the  case  of  pi  with  a 
weary  track  to  cross  before  they  could  look  again  for 
so  well-sheltered  and  fair  a  home. 

It  u  i  iry  now  to  go  back  for  a  moment  and 

speak  very  briefly  of  those  two  intellectual  move- 
ments just  alluded  to,  which  brought  us,  by  their 
irresistible  drift,  into  that  period  of  controversy. 

The  first  was  what  is  called  New  Englan 
oendentalism.     Eta  hii  I  d  written  in  a 

graceful  way  by  Mr.  Frothingham, with  warm  appre- 
ciation of  the  chief  actors  in  it,  and  I  shall  make  no 
attempt  to  repeat  it  here.1    A  mere  outline  of  beta 

1  The  ciitramatancei  which  led  to  the  (tarnation  «»f  what 
afterwardi  to  be  known  m  Um  Transcendental   Clab 

After   the   public  I  nurd    Unil  I  - nni.il, 

Sept   8,  1836,  it  ehenoed  th.it  II.   W.  Ripley, 

P,   II.  Hedge,  an  I  '  anaui  net    in  conversation  on   tlie  un- 

•ory  condition  of  Unitarian  theology,  and  parsed  the 

noun  in    conference  in   a   room    at   "  Wlllard'a."     The    hum  ting  wai 

adjourned  to  meet  at  Mr.  Ripley's  in  Boeton  the  following  week  ; 

ami  thence  again,  in  the  eon:  .mm-  month,  to  Mr.  Emenon'l 

in  Concord,  on  this  ftffiairiffn  there  waa  a  much  larger  gathering, 
including   A.  &  Alcott,  «  .  a.  Bartoi,  <:.  l'.  Bradford,  »>.  A.  Brown, 

son,  W.  H.  I  'hanning,  .1.   F.  Clarke,  .!.  S.   D  :  :.iin>, 

Caleb  Stetson,  Margaret  Foliar,  and  lliai  K.  P.  Peab  i  ly.     The  club 

thus  formed,  without  rules  or  organization  (sometimes  called  among 
iti  members  the    '•]!•  |gi    '  iub  "),  continued   to   meet   at    lm 
intervals,  according  to  peraonal  convenience,  —  Mr.  Hedge  tiring  at 

that  time  in  Bangor,  .Maine,  —  lor  about  ten  years,  or  till  the  aban- 
donment of  the   Brook  Farm  experiment,  aud  the  removal  of  Mr. 


70  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

would  tell  next  to  nothing  about  it  to  those  who  did 
not  know  it  already ;  and  a  fair  judgment  of  it  would 
be  too  long  and  difficult  a  task,  even  if  I  were  other- 
wise capable  of  it.  The  easiest  way  of  describing  it 
is  as  the  sentimental,  mystical,  and  poetic  side  of  the 
liberal  movement.  It  had  its  vagaries,  its  eccen- 
tricities, its  unintelligible  speculation,  its  fantastic 
poetry,  its  wonderful  "  Orphic  Sayings,"  and  its  so- 
cialistic experiment  at  Brook  Farm;  and  all  these 
occasioned  more  or  less  bewilderment,  scandal,  or 
amusement  to  outsiders.  Even  the  noble  and  sweet 
music  of  Emerson's  discourse  only  made  it  palatable 
to  the  ear,  without  commending  it  to  the  intolerant 
common-sense  of  the  day ;  while  the  great  moral  sweep 
and  energy  of  Carlyle,  chief  prophet  of  the  new  era, 
so  full  of  bracing  vigor  to  the  younger  generation, 
hardly  began  to  be  recognized  under  the  clumsy  hu- 
mor and  unpardonable  caprices  of  his  style. 

Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  it,  this  at  least  may 
be  fairly  claimed  for  Transcendentalism  :  that  it  dis- 
solved away  a  good  many  hard  boundaries  of  opin- 
ion ;  it  melted  quite  thoroughly  the  crust  that  was 
beginning  to  form  on  the  somewhat  chilly  current 
of  liberal  theology.  Eational  criticism  is  indeed 
necessary,  in  order  that  the  current  shall  move  at 
all ;  but  rational  criticism  alone  is  shallow  and  ster- 
ile. If  independent  thinking  is  to  be  united  with 
any  fervor  and  flow  of  the  religious  life,  it  must  find 
religion  somewhere  as  a  primary  sentiment  in  human 

Ripley  to  New  York.  Theodore  Parker  had  joined  meanwhile,  and 
Mr.  Putnam  ceased  to  attend  after  the  first  meeting  in  Concord. 
The  publication  of  "  The  Dial "  was  begun  in  1840. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM:    ITS   DOGMA.  71 

nature,  and  not  as  a  mere  logical  inference  from  cer- 
t.'iin  facta  of  history.  This  is  just  what  New  England 
Transcendentalism  did.  It  was  fortunate  that  it  came 
before  the  scientific  development,  and  not  after  it. 
It  is  the  great  felicity  of  free  religions  thought  in  this 
country,  in  its  later  unfolding,  that  it  had  itfl  birth 
iii  a  sentiment  so  poetic,  80  generous,  so  devout,  BO 
open  to  all  the  humanities  as  well  ai  the  widest 
sympathies  of  philosophy  and  the  higher  literature, 
as  that. 

It  is  simple  and  easy  justice   to   say  this   now,  at 
tin-  end  of  fnrtv  years     But  at  that  time,  and  for  many 

years  later,  Transcendentalism  was  not  only  a  laugh- 
ing-stock   It  was  also  the  great  theological  bu 

of  the  serious  and  devout     As   a  system  of  opinion 
(if  such  it  could  be  called),  it  was  limply  this. 
fundamental  ideas  which  make  the  basis  of  the  re- 
ligious life,  —  the  idea  of  God,  of  duty,  and  of  immor- 
tality. —  the  transoendentalists  asserted, are  given  out- 
right in  the  nature  and  constitution  of  man,  ami  do 
not  have  t>  be  learned  from  any  book  or  confirmed 
by  any  miracle.      In  one  way,  this  followed,  i 
enough,  from  what  Channing  had  taught  of  the 
nity  and  the  divine  (dements  of  human  nature.      In 
another  way,  it   was   connected  with  a  certain   i 
vescence  of  interest  and  enthusiasm  at  the  new  ideas 
that  came  floating  in,  when  German  poetry  and  phi- 
losophy began  to  be  familiar.     It  would  he  no  doubt 
interesting  to  follow  this  up  on  its  literary  side,  since 
it  has  deeply  colored  one  large  department  of  our 
literature,  best  represented  by  Emerson  and  Lowell; 
but  at  present  we  have  to  do  only  with  its  bearing 


72  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

on  theology,  and,  in  fact,  only  with  the  negative  side 
of  that. 

For  it  follows,  as  soon  as  you  state  the  principle 
which  lies  at  the  base  of  the  transcendental  doctrine, 
that  you  have  cut  away  —  like  a  balloon,  as  it  were 
—  not  only  from  the  ground  of  narrow  common-sense, 
but  from  the  moorings  of  religious  tradition.  Trans- 
cendentalism seemed  to  affect  a  certain  aristocratic 
disdain  of  common  ways  of  thinking,  and  to  the  sober- 
minded  appeared  full  of  vagary  and  peril.  God,  it 
said,  is  not  a  Being  apart  from  the  universe,  but 
everywhere,  as  the  life  of  all  things,  and  especially 
in  your  own  thought  of  the  Infinite.  That  sounds 
well ;  but,  to  the  plain  understanding  of  plain  people, 
"  everywhere  "  is  much  the  same  as  nowhere,  and  a 
God  who  is  merely  infinite  is  much  the  same  as  no 
God  at  all. 

So  much  the  worse  for  the  understanding,  replied 
the  transcendentalist :  you  must  learn  to  discard  that, 
if  you  would  deal  with  these  high  matters,  and  trust 
not  reasoning,  but  only  the  absolute  Eeason,  "  with  a 
capital  E."  Eeason  will  teach  you  that  God  is  not 
here  or  there,  but  everywhere  ;  there  is  neither  Past 
nor  Future  with  him,  but  only  an  eternal  Now.  Not 
this  or  that  thing  is  a  miracle,  but  everything  or  else 
nothing :  at  any  rate  (to  borrow  Parker's  illustration), 
the  real  miracle  is  not  turning  a  few  gallons  of  water 
into  wine  at  Cana,  but  turning  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  barrels  of  water  into  wine  every  year  in  France 
and  Italy  and  along  the  Ehine.  Duty  is  taught  us  by 
the  voice  within  :  what  do  we  need  of  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments ?     We  know  by  our  own  consciousness 


TRANSCENDENTALISM:    ITS  ISSUE.  ,3 

that  we  are  immortal :  what  need  of  any  proof  from 
the  Resurrection  ?  All  men  are  inspired  more  or  less, 
every  man  as  much  as  his  nature  is  capable  of  being  : 
we  owe  no  particular  respect  to  any  sa  ks,  01 

prophets,   or  apostles,   or  to    Christ    himself,   e: 
where  our  Reason  allirms  the  same  truth  to  us.      In 
short,  for  all  ci  or  inspiration  or  I 

mony  offered  from  abroad,  Transcendentalism  substi- 
tuted an  off-hand  dogmatism  of  its  own,  whose  only 
evidence  was  Sentiment,  —  I  feel  thai  it  u  tr\ 
absolute  Reason, —  T  know  thai  U  is  true. 

All  this   was   very  exhilarating   to   those  young 
people,  especially,  who  eraved  religious  satisfa 
yet  found  themselves  dissatisfied  with  the  ordinary 
proofs,  which  probably  they  had  never  ini 

or    tried    to    understand.      But,   BS    may  well   1 

!.  it  Bounded  like  blasphemous  nonsense  to  the 
serious,  intelligent,  and  excellent  people  who  had 
been  trained  I  ntdous  a  ■  of  a 

revealed  religion.  As  long  as  it  kept  in  the  region 
of  poetry  or  sentiment  or  I  eition  it  could  he 

home  with,  though  it  looked  a  little  hazy  and   rather 

suspicions.     In  fin  I  rene  optimism  was  already 

making  great  havoc  of  men's  plain,  old-fashioned 
theories  of  right  and  wrong.  But  the  innocent- 
Bounding,  idyllic  sentiment  became  quite  another 
thing  when  it  took  shape  in  one  of  the  mosl 
matie  of  thinkers,  sturdiest  of  combatants,  boldest 
of  assailants,  most  widely  informed  of  students  and 
readers,  and  in  his  hands  became  a  sharp  weapon  of 
attack. 

The  war  of  words  which  had  been  long  gathering 


74  FIFTEEN  YEARS  OF  CONTROVERSY. 

broke  out  early  in  the  year  1841,  over  a  thin  pam- 
phlet called  "  The  Transient  and  Permanent  in  Chris- 
tianity," — an  ordination  sermon  by  Theodore  Parker, 
preached  in  May  of  that  year.  There  was  nothing 
in  it  new  to  intelligent  readers  then;  nothing  that 
would  not  seem  harmless  enough  now,  or  even  com- 
monplace, considering  the  turn  discussions  have  taken 
since :  nothing,  that  is,  except  the  rare  rhetorical 
beauty,  the  fervor  of  sentiment,  and  the  fearless 
range  of  illustration,  —  those  literary  qualities  in 
which  Theodore  Parker  stood  out  at  once  far  in  ad- 
vance of  Channing  or  any  of  the  writers  of  his  school, 
and  created,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  a  theological 
style  of  his  own.  That  style  had  great  qualities,  and 
it  had  great  faults.  With  a  singular  poetical  sweet- 
ness, wealth,  and  fervor,  it  was  vigorous,  straightfor- 
ward, manly,  never  a  word  without  definite  purpose 
and  aim;  at  the  same  time  too  self- asserting,  too 
scornful  of  antagonists,  utterly  unmindful  of  the  qual- 
ification which  sober  argument  demands,  passionate 
in  conviction,  unable  to  acknowledge  truth  or  honesty 
on  the  other  side. 

The  "  permanent "  in  Christianity  was,  of  course, 
its  moral  doctrine  and  its  religious  life ;  the  "  tran- 
sient "  was  the  form,  the  creed,  the  fable  and  myth 
wrought  about  it.  The  assertions  of  the  discourse 
might  be  borne  with,  but  its  illustrations  were  a  deep 
offence.  That  Jesus  as  Son  of  God  should  be  likened 
to  Hercules,  and  his  miracles  to  those  of  that  errant 
spiritualist  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  was  not  easily  to  be 
pardoned  by  those  who  considered  themselves  to  hold 
a  positive  system  in  Christianity.     Nothing,  in  fact, 


THB   PARKEB   CONTROVERSY.  75 

is  so  hard  to  reconcile  with  Theodore  Parker's  sa- 
gacity   or  else  his  good  faith  as  a  controversialist, 
as  bis  surprise  at  the  scandal  and  dissent  which  fol- 
lowed    Allowing  for  a   little  vacillation  and 
general   ignorance  of  modern  criticism,  th< 
theologians   whom    he   attacked   honestly   supposed 
themselves  to  stand  on  ground  strictly  supernatural, 
and  to  maintain  that  ground  by  fair  historical 
ment     A-  ;i  rule,  they  did  mpt  to  meet  him 

in  fair  delate,  —  which,  indeed,  most  of  them  were 
quite  incapable  of  doing.     His  incredible  wealth  of 
reading  and  ready  command  of  the  weapons  of  debate, 
y  nothing  of  his  hot,  aggr  tyle  of  attack, 

Would  disarm  a  platoon  of  at  I         at  a 

breath.     In  on  it  was  a  pity  that  the  contro- 

versy  as  it  actually  ensued  was  wordy,  Btormy,  effu- 
sive, sentimental,  vituperative,  angry,  —  anythin 
calm  and  scientific  on  either  Bide  Men  of  equal 
sincerity,  equal  goodness,  equal  intelligence,  were 
arrayed  on  both  sides;  and  to  this  day  it  appears  t<> 
me  that  those  took  the  better  part  who  chose  neither 

side,  hut  watched  as   patiently  and   modestly  as   they 

might,  bo  see  the  scientific  hearings  of  the  question, 

as  they  should  en  •  dually  from  the   noise  and 

smoke  of  the,  field. 

The  waste  of  hard  feeling  and  the  waste  of  hard 
words  seem  a  pity  ;  hut  that  was  inevitable  when  the 
debate  became  popular  and  personal,  —  and  it  had  to 
become  popular  and  personal,  to  prepare  that  broader 
way  which  has  been  opened  since.  The  must  radical 
questions  —  not  merely  about  the  doctrinal  interpre- 
tation of  thfl  Bihlfl  hnt  about  the  nature  of  inspirsv- 


76  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

tion,  the  possibility  of  miracles,  the  very  foundation 
of  our  belief  in  God,  duty,  or  immortality  —  came 
directly  into  the  open  field.  It  was  no  longer  a  dis- 
cussion among  metaphysicians,  theologians,  critics, 
and  religionists;  but  men  took  sides  on  it  as  they 
do  in  politics,  from  temperament  or  else  personal 
feeling. 

Theodore  Parker's  name,  accordingly,  from  that  of 
a  retired  student,  a  fervent,  very  practical,1  and  some- 
what sentimental  preacher,  at  once  became  that  of  a 
party  leader.  His  personal  qualities  enlisted  the 
strongest  feelings  of  attachment  and  hostility.  His 
personal  hits  were  as  much  enjoyed  on  one  side  as 
they  were  resented  on  the  other.  It  was  a  great  sol- 
ace to  him  and  his  friends  to  corner  his  opponents  in 
some  false  position,  where  they  would  seem  to  deny 
on  one  side  the  freedom  of  opinion  they  had  just 
been  asserting  on  the  other.  It  would  have  been 
fatuity  in  them,  on  the  contrary,  —  if  their  own  be- 
lief or  defence  of  Christianity  as  they  held  it  meant 
anything  at  all,  — to  take  a  different  stand  from  what 
they  did.  It  would  have  been  far  more  to  their  dis- 
credit if,  at  his  one  challenge,  they  had  suddenly  aban- 
doned their  old  position,  and,  at  a  leap,  passed  from 
an  honest  though  narrow  supernaturalism  into  the 
thin  air  of  Free  Religion.  It  has  never  been  quite 
clear  to  me  whether  he  really  felt  the  surprise  he 
showed  that  they  did  not  so  stultify  themselves,  or 
whether  he  merely  wished  to  put  them  into  an  un- 
comfortable  place  by  pushing   home  their  seeming 

1  One  of  his  sermons  while  at  Spring  Street  was  on  the  peculiar 
duties,  trials,  and  temptations  of  Milk-men. 


TEMPER  OF  THE   DI8CU88ION.  77 

inconsistency,  and  so  compel  them   to  review  their 
ground. 

So  far  as  the  controversy  was  personal,  its  story 
has  been  well  told  already,  and  need  not  be  repeated. 
The  correspondence  that  grew  out  of  it  on  his  part  is 
sometimes  sharply  unjust,  sometimes  noble,  generous, 
and  very  touching.  Whatever  his  faults  as  a  contro- 
versialist,—  with  all  that  exasperating  of  lip 
and  style,  of  which  he  professed  himself  quite  inno- 
cently unconscious,  —  he  was  not  only  one  of  the 
most  genuine,  but  one  of  the  most  affectionate, 
erous,  and  warm-hearted  of  men.  The  control 
as  he  said,  and  probably  felt,  was  none  of  his  making 
or  choice.  So  far  as  it  was  merely  theological,  it  has 
greatly  lost  its  in!  m  that  Transcendentalism 
is  out  of  date,  and  all  discussion  of  that  matter  goes 
upon  quite  a  different  set  of  principles,  and  a  scien- 
tific method  which  was  as  foreign  to  the  one  side  as 
to  the  other.  At  bottom,  his  system  was  dogmatism 
resting  on  sentiment;  that  of  his  opponents  was  dog- 
matism  (in  a  very  mild  form  resting  on  revelation. 
Both  have  been  taken  up  and  absorbed  in  a  far  wider 
intellectual  method,  or  else  are  submitted  to  quite 
other  tests  of  scientific  study.  I  at  heretic  and 
iconoclast  of  thirty  v<  has  left  a  name  held 
almost  equally  in  honor  by  those  on  both  sides  of  the 
old  line. 

For  he  was  something  more  than  an  assailant  and 
a  critic.  He  was  a  man  of  great  warmth  of  affection; 
of  rare,  fervent,  and  genuine  religious  feeling ;  of 
broad  popular  sympathies;  capable  of  great  and  pas- 
sionate force  of  moral  conviction.     When   some  of 


78  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

his  friends,  resenting  the  petty  hindrances  and  jeal- 
ousies that  blocked  his  speech,  passed  the  curt  and 
emphatic  resolve,  "  That  Theodore  Parker  shall  have 
a  chance  to  be  heard  in  Boston,"  and  so  opened  for 
him  the  way  to  a  noble  metropolitan  audience,  and 
a  hearing  through  the  press  such  as  was  given  to  no 
other  man  of  his  time,  he  went  on  in  that  open  way, 
not  to  a  futile  and  petty  bickering  of  theological  dis- 
pute, but  to  a  work  of  vast  moral  sweep  and  power, 
which  made  his  the  most  potent  and  commanding 
voice  ill  that  larger,  more  momentous,  and  fateful 
controversy  in  which  the  main  strength  of  his  life 
was  spent. 

But,  to  approach  that  controversy  fairly,  it  is  well 
to  go  back  to  its  antecedents  in  a  calmer  time.  The 
great  debate  of  human  rights  and  political  justice, 
from  forty  to  twenty  years  ago,  narrowed  more  and 
more  towards  a  life-and-death  struggle  with  American 
slavery.  It  is  impossible  for  a  later  generation  to 
understand  the  sincere  repugnance  and  horror  with 
which  that  conflict  was  seen  to  be  approaching ;  or 
how  what  looks  now  like  cowardly  compromise  and 
subterfuge  seemed  to  many  then  their  patriotic  duty ; 
or  how  the  very  things  that  checked  and  delayed  the 
antislavery  movement  were  what  made  the  bloody 
success  of  emancipation  possible. 

Historically  speaking,  it  is  not  nearly  so  important 
that  all  good  men  should  take  the  view  which  ab- 
stractly seems  truest  and  best,  as  it  is  that  they  should 
be  honest  in  maintaining  their  own  view,  which  with 
the  majority  of  them  is  very  likely,  regarded  ab- 
stractly, neither  truest  nor  best.     A  party  consisting 


CONSERVATIVE  AND   REFORMER.  79 

of  all  good  men  on  one  side,  as  against  a  party 
sisting  of  all  bad  men  on  the  other,  would  I 
only  a  monstrosity,  but  B  great  calamity  to  mankind. 
That  slow  process  of  thirl  ,  by  which  a  ma- 

jority of  American  mind-  lucated  to  Bee  the 

g  and  danger  of  >la\  I  >w,  it* 

we  think  of  the  conflicting  interests  and  the  conflict- 
ing  forces  that  were  to  be  plunged  into  the  fight  I  ': 
course,  the  excited  combatants  do  d  tea     II  I 

partisanfl  on  either  side  clam  terminate  the 

leaden  of  the  other.    The  had  only 

when  the 

op  to  striking  heat:  then  the  task  is  taken  from  the 
hands  of  Eti  nd      ren  over  to  the  ordeal  of 

Battle 

While  the  debut*  g  on,  two  kinds  of  1. 

minds  are  equally  ry, —  the  bold,  valiant,  un- 

compromising, mi_  ted  in  devotion  to  an  idea, 

who  are  the  honest  Reformers  j  the  calm,  reasonable, 

ible  to  trim  the  balance,  to  watch  the  ch 
and  prevent  the  infinite  hazard  and  mischief 
reckless  move,  who  are  the  honest  Conaervath 

But,  besides  these  two,  there  is  a  third  class,  nobler 
and  more  necessary  than  either.      I:  men 

of  large  intellect  and  powerful  understanding ;  of 
knowledge  broad  and  various;  richly  equipped  by 
education  and  training;  allied  by  natural  gifts  and 
culture  to  the  elasses  that  incline  _ly  to 

conservatism  ;  yet  compelled  by  elear  intellectual 
conviction — as  Milton  was  —  to  cast  in  their  lot, 
when  the  critical  moment  comes,  with  the  leaders  of 
a  radical  reform.     Such  men  distinctly  set  aside  their 


80  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

own  calmer  and  perhaps  better  judgment  of  the  cir- 
cumstances, in  view  of  the  one  great  overwhelming 
necessity  that  is  upon  them  to  act.  Voluntarily  they 
narrow  the  breadth  of  their  understanding,  as  their 
sacrifice  to  the  one  idea  that  just  then  must  be  upheld 
at  all  hazards.  If  in  the  debate  which  follows  they 
appear  narrow-minded,  unjust  to  opponents,  violent, 
positive,  self-asserting,  it  is  against  the  generosity  of 
their  nature  and  the  instincts  of  their  breeding.  It 
is,  in  short,  their  way  of  sacrifice  to  the  higher  law  of 
necessity  and  the  duty  of  the  hour. 

Of  such  men,  the  nobler  sort  of  leaders  in  the  great 
battle  of  right  and  wrong,  the  most  eminent  among 
us  were  Charles  Sumner  and  Theodore  Parker.  Of 
all  our  highly  cultivated  men  of  letters,  they,  I  think, 
were  the  only  ones  who  gave  themselves  heart  and 
soul  to  the  antislavery  movement  as  the  one  chief 
thing;  of  all  the  antislavery  leaders,  they  were  the 
only  ones  who  kept  up  their  broad  scholarship,  and 
their  interest  in  all  topics,  intellectual  and  moral, 
that  make  for  the  welfare  of  mankind.  And  in  the 
period  to  which  I  especially  refer,  —  coming  down, 
that  is,  to  some  three  years  before  the  war, — the  place 
of  Theodore  Parker  was  one  that  belonged  to  him 
alone. 

It  is  not,  however,  my  intention  to  give  here  a 
sketch  of  his  character,  or  of  the  very  able,  intense, 
and  incessant  labors  which  broke  down  his  sturdy 
physical  strength,  and  laid  him  in  the  grave  before 
the  age  of  fifty.  His  is  quite  too  large  and  remark- 
able a  personality  to  be  discussed  in  this  incidental 
way.     My  business  now  is  with  the  controversy  in 


CJXITA.RU]  RVAT1SM.  81 

its  general  drift,  —  not  as  it  belongs  to  the  history 
of  the  nation,  bat  as  it  connected  itself  with  the 
tone  of  feeling  and  affected  the  fortunes  of  Unita- 
rian ism. 

We  note  that,  here  as  elsewhere,  there  wen  two 
exactly  opposite  tendencies  brought  into  close  con- 
tact. On  the  one  hand,  the  Unitarian  body,  by  po- 
sition and  history,  was  mainly  conscrvativ 
as  it  included  scholars,  professional  men,  merchants, 
politicians,  aim  ly  90.    [ta  theology  might 

free  in  some  regards,  but  in  ai 
it  fully  shared  the  conservatism  of  all  religions  1 
then.      It  is  hut  timidly  and  awkwardly,  in  this  coun- 
try at  least,  that  a  church  deals  with  matters  b 
ing  to  the   State  or  to  at   large.      And   what 

w.i- a  violent  reproach  then,  in  the  month  of  those 
who  thought  everything  must  give  way  before  this 

great  question  of  humanity,  and  cried  out  loudly 
•gainst  the  Church  as  the   "refuge  of  oppress 

because   it  did   not    lift  up   it  3  1    trumpet 

against  negro  >l.r.  easily  seen,  in  all  ordinary 

affairs  of  State,  to  be  the  only  right,  safe,  and  possible 
thing. 

A  very  great  stress  of  personal  conviction  alone  can 
justify,  in  any  man,  tin-  breaking  of  that  safe  rule 
which  declares  that  "within  his  beat"  lie  may  be 
useful  and  perhaps  strong;  outside  of  it,  he  may 
lly  do  mischief,  and  will  at  any  rate  be  weak.  All 
this  is  to  say,  in  so  many  words,  that  the  conservative 
attitude  of  many  churches,  during  most  of  the  anti- 
slavery  debate,  even  it  carried  to  a  cowardly  extreme, 
was  probably  conscientious  in  the  main,  and  was  at 


82  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

any  rate  inevitable.  Eight  or  wrong,  that  conserva- 
tive attitude  in  State  affairs  was  held  by  most  Unita- 
rian churches  of  any  large  name  or  influence ;  and  it 
made  the  hard  rock  against  which  more  than  one 
generous  heart,  bolder  if  not  truer  than  the  rest,  broke 
itself  in  vain. 

This  fact  stirred  more  deep  feeling  at  the  time,  and 
is  to  this  day  more  blamed  and  wondered  at,  than 
anything  else  in  the  attitude  of  Unitarianism.  It  is, 
indeed,  common  to  say  that  those  who  were  not  Abo- 
litionists then  deeply  deplore  their  mistake  now,  and 
wish  they  had  been.  But  I  do  not  think  that  this  is 
at  all  the  case,  —  certainly  not  with  those  who  (like 
Dr.  Gannett)  took  that  conservative  ground  from 
strong  and  sincere  conviction.  Most  of  them,  it  is 
true,  were  strongly  committed  to  the  national  cause 
in  the  war  for  the  Union,  and  heartily  sustained  the 
policy  which  at  last  gave  the  death-blow  to  slavery. 
But  those  same  men  would  have  held  it  a  horrible 
crime  to  declare  war  for  the  abolition  of  slavery,  or 
to  do  anything,  knowingly,  to  hasten  such  a  war. 

War  is  a  political,  not  a  moral  act ;  and  the  motive 
for  it,  they  held,  should  be  political,  not  moral.  Ab- 
stract justice,  social  right,  belong  to  that  kingdom 
which  is  "  not  of  this  world,"  for  which  it  is  not 
lawful  to  fight  with  the  weapons  of  brute  force.  The 
unlawfulness  of  war,  the  gospel  of  peace,  had  been 
taken  very  much  to  heart  by  the  earlier  generation  of 
liberal  Christian  thinkers.  The  only  case  that  would 
justify  war,  in  their  view,  —  the  only  case  that  would 
seriously  perplex  the  conscience  of  the  more  scrupu- 
lous, —  was  the  case  which  really  did  happen,  when 


OSPEL   OF   HUMANITY.  83 

war  was  manifestly  the  one  thing  that  could  save  the 
nation's  life,  and  when  the  nation  itself  was  on  the 
right  side  in  a  fundamental  question  of  humanity 
and  justice. 

I  do  not  think,  therefore,  that  the  more  cona 
tivc  of  those  'lays  havi  pented  their  alarm  and 

it  at  a  course  of  action  which  seemed  to  them 
sore  to  bring  oo  a  civil  war,- — as,  in  fact,  it  did  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  liberalism  in  theology  was  the 
natural  ally  of  liberty  and  justice  in  national  affairs. 
The  authority  of  the  Creed  once  shaken,  Humanity 
becomes  the  jtron  e  I  sanction  of  belief  and  conduct 
Political  justice  becomes    i  rily  a  pan  of  the 

free-thinker's  religion,  bo  long  as  he  has  any.  It  was 
so  with  the  liberal  movement  here.  Political  justice 
had  made  part  of  its  history  in  the  Old  World,  and 
had  been  eloquently  expounded  by  a  whole 
(•ration  ul*  the  liberal  preachers,  Channing  at  their 
head. 

Thus  a  "gospel  of  humanity  " —  sanguine,  hopeful, 

devout  —  had   made  a    part    of  the   liberal    tradition. 

In  seeking  to  state  it  to  ourselves,  we  think  first  of 
Channing;  —  his  fervent  assertion  of  the  dignil 
human  nature,  the  glow  of  his  Bteady  hope  in  the 

spiritual  and  social  destinies  of  mankind.  And  I 
think  we  have  seen  in  the  older  men  of  that  school 
—  ohler  than  ourselves,  hut  his  disciples  —  a  certain 
glow  of  humanity  which  stayed  with  them  through 

life,  which  the  chill  of  old  age  or  Ion-  waiting  had 
little  effect  to  quench,  as  those  who  have  lived  in  the 
tropic  /one  keep  something  "f  its  warmth  through  the 
lon<r  frosts  of  a  northern  winter.     In  a  certain  child- 


84  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

like  way  it  was  strikingly  so  with  my  father,  who 
quite  honestly  felt  that  the  years  from  seventy  to 
eighty  were  his  happiest  years.  In  a  still  more  marked 
way  it  was  so  with  that  brave  saint  of  all  the  human- 
ities, Samuel  Joseph  May,  of  whom  they  that  loved 
him  may  say  that  only  to  know  him  was  a  sort  of 
sunshine  in  one  nook,  at  least,  of  the  most  unfriended 
life. 

It  is  worth  while  to  recall  the  halo  which  invested 
that  phase  of  our  mental  life,  that  glow  as  of  dawn 
which  hung  round  the  horizon,  so  as  to  relieve  against 
it  certain  phases  in  which  life  has  shown  itself  since. 
Daylight  is  better  than  dawn  for  most  uses,  particu- 
larly for  seeing  our  way  among  things  that  bewilder 
and  delude;  but  it  can  never  have  "the  glory  of  the 
rising."  That  fair  dawn  was  the  opening  of  a  stormy 
day.  The  abstract  principle,  the  fervid  sentiment 
that  made  it,  had  to  be  tried  as  by  fire.  A  season  of 
passionate  conflict  ensued  before  the  season  of  calmer 
reason,  of  reconciling  science.  That  time  of  contro- 
versy it  has  not  been  my  purpose  to  narrate  in  its 
events;  only  to  indicate  the  spirit  out  of  which  it 
grew,  and  the  part  had  in  it  by  those  intellectual 
leaders  who  have  left  their  mark  deepest  upon  that 
time. 

Among  those  leaders,  however,  I  wish  to  recall  very 
briefly  the  memory  of  two  marked  men  with  whom  I 
was  thrown  into  rather  close  relation  quite  early  in 
the  period  I  have  retraced ;  whose  paths  crossed  not 
far  from  then ;  who  both  took  a  very  conspicuous 
part  in  the  movement  we  are  looking  back  on ;  who 
did  their  task  with  equal  honesty  and  daring,  with 


THEODORE    PARKER.  85 

temper  not  very  unlike,  hut  with  <'i  difference  in  aim 
and  result  which  went  on  widening  to  the  end.     Of 
of  them   I   have   spoken   at  some  little   length 
already,  and  shall  have  occasion  to  q  an. 

Theodore  Parker's  inteUeetoa]  self-assertion —  re- 
markable  in  one  who  knew  bo  well  the  history  of 
human  opinion — might  be  plausibly  associated  with 
the  much  solitary  reading  of  his  youth,  without  the 
chance    of   conflict  and  comparison   which  college 

wealth  of  sympathy  mad< 
who  was  honored  by  it  feel  as  it*  drawing  on  the  on- 
claimed  Btores  of  it  hoarded  in  the  heart  of  a  child- 
less man,  —  which,  to  his  frankly  expressed  grief,  he 
was.  Never  did  a  strong  nature  show  a  deeper  crav- 
ing for  persona]  affection,  and  the  exercise  of  that 
power  to  guide  which  flows  with  it.  Never  did  a 
strong  and  passionate  conviction  hold  itself  more 
patiently  in  abeyance  in  intercourse  with  a  younger 
mind,  lest  it  should  even  hint  an  opinion  that  might 
check  its  own  free  working.  If  not  of  the  first  order 
of  speculative  ability,  few  could  be  betl 
than  he  with  the  positive  result  eolation;  yet 

of  all  men  in  that  field  I  should  think  that  none  could 
have  held  his  religious  opinions  more  absolutely  as 
postulates  admitting  no  debate,  and  wholly  outside 

of  any  process  of  argument  which  may  have  led  to 
them. 

These  opinions  were  implied  throughout  in  the 
polemics  that  so  swept  him  aside  from  the  studi- 
ous, constructive  work  he  had  marked  out.  —  for 
the  ambition  of  his  life  was  to  be  an  historian  of 

religious  opinion, —  and   with    great   human  passion 


86  FIFTEEN  YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

made  him  so  genuine  an  iconoclast.  Yet  there  was 
noticeable,  in  his  later  life,  a  desire  to  understand,  and 
a  leaning  of  sympathy  towards,  some  materialistic 
forms  of  thought  widely  alien  from  his  own :  either 
because  other  men's  bigotry  offended  him,  or  that  he 
would  free  his  soul  from  the  last  trace  of  theological 
prejudice. 

It  was  a  temporary  work,  just  then  greatly  needed, 
that  his  generous  and  large  nature  took  upon  itself ; 
and  his  name,  it  may  be,  is  best  recalled  as  that  of  a 
great  personal  force  in  the  best  life  of  our  time  rather 
than  as  the  intellectual  leader  and  guide  he  doubtless 
hoped  to  be.  His  temperament  did  not  admit  of 
justice  towards  those  who  honestly  differed,  as  good 
men  did,  in  theological  opinion  or  public  policy. 
With  the  most  generous  human  feeling,  he  could  not 
pardon  the  seeming  want  of  it  in  other  men ;  yet  he 
could  bear  patiently  the  argument  or  the  rebuke  that 
tried  to  convince  him  he  was  in  the  wrong.  For 
high  courage  I  hardly  know  where  we  should  find 
his  match  among  men  of  intellect.  It  was  a  moment 
in  history  to  see  him  face,  with  taunt  and  defiance, 
an  angry  crowd  in  Faneuil  Hall,  where  the  Boston 
regiment  mustered  on  its  way  to  the  war  in  Mexico. 
And  when  he  went  to  rest,  in  1860,  just  before  the 
great  political  triumph  of  the  cause  he  died  for,  we 
missed  the  clearest  and  boldest  voice  of  all  that  read 
to  unwilling  ears  the  stern  lesson  of  the  time. 

The  hard,  restless,  implacably  honest,  and  domi- 
neering temper  of  Orestes  Brownson  had  just  been 
greatly  softened,  at  the  time  I  first  knew  him,  by  a 
sudden  flow  of  religious  feeling  in  channels  which  he 


ORESTES   A.    BROWNSON.  Wl 

bad  thought  dried  up.  A  mere  accident,  as  it  were, 
had  turned  him  from  a  very  positive  d  of  the 

French  Eclectics  to  an  equally  positive  and  unsparing 
critic  <>t'  them  in  the  name  of  a  aew  teacher  Pierre 
Leroux),  whose  phi  presently  took  for  the  k*-v 

to  a  new  rendering  of  the  Christian  revelation,  —  ;i 
reading  of  it  which,  with  a  certain  pious  and  - 
ful  fervor,  he  detailed  in  a  letter  to  Dr.Channiii 
"The   Mediatorial    Life   of   J  Beginning  his 

expositions  with  a  sweetness  and  pathos  very  marked 
jed  a  champion,  it  was  then  be  uttered  the 
bence  of  all  he  ever  wrote,  in  which  lie  spoke 
of  "that  glorious  inconsistency  which  due-  honor  to 

human  nature,  and    makes    nan  BO   mm  .    than 

their  creeds.*' 

But  it  was  not  long  before  "the  old  man"  in  him 

had  its   way  in  vigOTOB  .   I.      land  and  Pro- 

testantism With  a  curiously  slender  stock  of  erudi- 
tion, In-  showed  an  equally  extraordinary  arrogance 

and   fertility   in  abstract  argument     For  example, 
having  toiled  with  much  ado  as  he  told  me   thi 
some  fourteen  pages  of   Kant's    "  Introduction    — 

having  got  the  idea  of  it  to  his  own  satisfaction, — 
he  proceeded  to  write  more  than  fifty  pages  of  what, 
1  am  told  by  those  mure  competent  t«>  judge  than  I, 
is  really  instructive  exposition. 

On  the  20th  of  October,  1844,  as  he  told  me,  lie 
"became  a  Christian,-'  —  that  Is,  a  Catholic  convert 
by  profession,  with  all  which  that  name  might  imply; 
so  that,  when  I  asked  him,  u  But  BUppose  the  pi 
that  made  you  a  Catholic  had  been  Btopped  Bhorl 
at  a  certain  point:    suppose,   foT   instance,    that    you 


88  FIFTEEN   YEARS   OF   CONTROVERSY. 

had  died  on  the  19th  of  October?"  —  "  I  should  have 
gone  to  hell"  he  replied,  instantly  and  grimly,  —  a 
reply  which  left  neither  room  for  argument,  nor,  to 
tell  the  truth,  for  interest  in  any  further  argument 
he  might  have  to  offer,  as  soon  as  one  distinctly  saw- 
just  what  the  brief  was  which  he  had  taken  in  his 
new  appearance  before  the  Court. 

Absolute  honesty  of  conviction,  a  complete  cutting 
adrift  from  whatever  may  have  been  his  religious 
moorings  in  early  life,  the  weariness  of  a  long  war 
with  ideas  and  customs  embedded  in  modern  society, 
and  a  religious  need  craving  and  imperious  as  in  any 
zealot  of  any  period,  with  almost  as  passionate  con- 
tempt for  the  opinions  of  more  knowing  but  weaker 
men,  —  these  make  it  not  very  strange  that  a  man  so 
strong  and  arrogant  should  tire  of  incessant  self-con- 
flict, and  choose  to  enlist  his  splendid  fighting  qualities 
under  a  flag  which  at  least  made*  him  constructively 
sure  of  something.  But  the  lesson  of  his  life  for  us 
was  all  told  above  thirty  years  ago ;  and  the  strong, 
stormful,  rude,  yet  tender-hearted  man  passes  away, 
leaving  hardly  a  ripple  in  our  memory  to  remind  us 
what  his  influence  had  been. 

I  recall  these  names  not  idly,  but  to  reinforce  the 
single  thought  with  which  I  close.  None  of  the 
topics  and  none  of  the  questions  I  have  been  dealing 
with  are  topics  or  questions  of  speculative  interest 
merely.  It  is  human  interests,  the  character,  life, 
work,  destinies  of  men,  that  come  in  play,  and  are 
touched  by  them.  And  perhaps  we  see  this  plainest 
when  we  remember  that  there  are  men  who  by  genius 
and  endowment  are  leaders  of  other  men,  to  whom 


MEN    OF    THOUGHT.  80 

these  spiritual  things  are  of  incomparably  more  mo- 
ment than  all  personal  and  terrestrial  things;  men 
who  willingly  —  nay,  inevitably  —  renounce  and  cut 
adrift  from  everything  else,  that  so  they  may 
their  souls.  Also,  that  whatever  is  honorable  and 
of  good  report  in  the  world,  and  whatever  makes  the 
irorlaa  life  worth  living,  depends  on  its  having  and 
cherishing  that  order  of  men,  to  whom  ( 'ireuinstance 
is  as  nothing,  and  Thought  is  all. 


THEODOEE  PARKEE. 

THE  names  of  Charming  and  Parker  stand  for 
very  different  if  not  hostile  types  of  religious 
feeling  and  belief.  But  they  are  constantly  mentioned 
together  as  representative  names.  Eight  or  wrong, 
Unitarianism  is  everywhere  held  responsible  for  them 
both.  One  as  distinctly  recalls  the  later  as  the  other 
does  the  earlier  phase  of  the  movement  we  are  at- 
tempting to  trace.  I  have  hinted  already  at  the  atti- 
tude of  the  theologian.  I  should  like,  if  I  may,  to 
bring  you  into  a  little  nearer  acquaintance  with  the 
man. 

Theodore  Parker's  biography  gives  us  glimpses  of 
a  childhood  and  youth  not  greatly  different  from 
that  of  many  an  energetic  and  studious  country  boy 
in  New  England.  Being  the  youngest  of  eleven 
children,  and  five  years  younger  than  the  tenth,  it  is 
likely  that  he  had  more  than  his  share  of  his  parents' 
companionship  and  care.  How  tenderly  and  piously 
his  conscience  was  instructed  by  his  mother,  he  has 
narrated  himself  in  the  story  of  the  "  little  spotted 
tortoise ; "  and  he  told  me  once  how  his  father,  when 
he  was  eight  years  old,  made  him  give  his  childish 
analysis  of  Plutarch's  Cicero,  before  allowing  him  to 
read  another  of  the  Lives.     In  the  charming  story  of 


KAKLV    YEA: 

his  early  years,  Mr.  Weiss  speaks  of  "  the  bloom  in 
thf  down  of  his  young  cheeks  competing  with  the 
fruit  as  he  down  the  road"  to  carry  his  lather's 

peaches  to  market  ;  and  I  how  the  sturdy 

youth,  trained  to  all  busy  and  helpful  ways,  when  he 
left  home  to  I  bool  or  make  a  visit*  won!  I 

a  man  "to  take  hi  nd  work  on  the  farm,"  till 

In-  was  twenty-one, 

As  a  student  here  in  Cambridge,  and  in  the 
of  his  ministry,  la*  w.i>  not  undei  differ 

in  opinion  much,  it'  at  all,  Bnom  those  about  him  ; 
though  I  have  heard  him  -  -  child  the 

current  supernaturalism  n  '.  belief  to 

him,  B  public  indica- 

tion of  any  change  was  w  hen  he  had  been  al 
five  years,  or  nearly,  in  the  public  work  of  hi 

d  ;  and,  when  this  proved  to  be  th<-  first  step  in 

Lical  conta  he  went  out  for  a  »1  — 

ither,   for   busier  study  and  ition  —  in 

Europe.     So  that  there  was  oot    baste,  but   rather 

deliberation,  in  his   entering   upon   the 
that  made  him  s<»  Bpeedily  and  widely  known. 

From    his    return    in    1844    until    the    fatal    att 
which  forced  him  from  hi  o  January,   I 

was  a  term  of  almost  exactly  fifteen  years,  during 
which  he  did  his  most  effective  and  chai 
work.  Fifteen  years  are  a  term  so  short,  that  there 
were  those  old  enough  to  take  a  share  in  that  work 
from  the  first,  and  to  go  with  him  all  the  way,  who 
yet  might  feel  at  the  end  of  it  that  their  own  task 
was  not  much  more  than  begun.  His  unusual  bodily 
vigor  and  capacity  of  labor  might  promise  at  least 


92  THEODORE  PARKER. 

twice  as  long  a  term,  and  he  probably  expected  to 
work  on  till  seventy  without  much  abatement.  That 
he  broke  down  as  he  did  at  forty-eight,  means  not 
merely  that  he  was  vulnerable  to  the  disease  fatal  to 
so  many  of  his  kin.  It  means  also  an  unsparing,  even 
prodigal,  spending  of  his  strength.  It  means,  too, 
that  something  of  his  strength  was  wasted  needlessly. 
Seeing  a  sounding-board  above  the  pulpit  in  a  Swiss 
church  during  his  last  journey,  he  said,  sadly,  "  If  I 
had  had  that  in  Music  Hall,  I  should  not  be  here 
now ! "  But,  to  tell  the  truth,  his  voice  was  used  un- 
skilfully ;  throat  and  lungs  were  rasped  by  the  effort 
to  speak  too  loud.  This  we  may  say  now  in  pity  and 
regret,  honoring  the  motive  of  it  all  the  more.  For 
it  was  of  a  piece  with  the  rest.  His  life  was  poured 
into  his  work  wholly  and  at  once.  Not  only  the 
water  was  always  moving,  but  the  channel  was  always 
full.  Prudence  would  say,  Economize  the  power ;  do 
not  spend  the  wealth  of  life  so  fast;  more  will  be 
done  at  last  if  done  less  prodigally  at  first.  But  a 
motive  higher  than  prudence  —  what  in  certain  cases 
we  may  call  the  Divine  economy  of  life  contrasted 
with  the  human  —  will  decide  otherwise.  An  effort 
of  massed  and  concentrated  strength  is  more  than  the 
same  amount  husbanded  and  diffused.  There  is  no 
common  measure  between  the  force  of  a  pressure  and 
the  force  of  a  blow.  The  true  value  of  a  life  is  often 
in  the  intensity  of  the  flame  that  is  burning  it  away. 

The  first  impression  received  by  one  who  came  in 
contact  with  Mr.  Parker  in  the  prime  of  his  years 
was  of  a  nature  at  once  sturdy  and  kindly.  His 
frame  was  solid,  square-set,  hardy,  and  robust.     On 


INDUSTRY. 

a  long  exhausting  journey,  on  foot  or  otherwise, 
after  the  spirit  of  his  companions  flagged,  and  their 

gth  was  spent,  late  into  the  day  or  i 
would  go  on  (it  was  said)  just  as  cheerily, 
step,  high  in  spirit,  with  argument*  anecdote,  and  fun 
to  keep  up  their  failing  courage  by  the  way.  On  the 
farm,  in  the  handling  of  scythe  or  plough,  there  were 
few  day-laborers  who  could  keep  up  with  him.  What 
would  be  >k  for  any  ordinal] 

he  would  combine  with  wl  rk  he  hid 

to  da    Thus,  when  he  taught  a  country  school  and 
supped  al  five,  he  won]  I  study  from  six  till  two     On 
I  Lecturing  tour  he  musl  take  his  Batchel  lull  of  I 
to  be  devoured  at  odd  times  upon  the  road     As  ■ 
member  of  this  School,  I  do  not  ventui  what 

his  industries  were;  hut  1  have  heard  him  t<-ll  with 
relish  of  the  '_rivat  German  theologian  who  Ian* 
to  him  that  he  himself  was  able  to  give  no  more  than 
eighteen  hours  a  day  to  hi-  books  I 

In   finish  of  scholarship  ho  doul  iked  the 

accuracy  which  a  more  critical  training  would  have 
given.  But  by  patient  accumulation  ho  1. 
up  a  wealth  of  knowledge  that  was  always  a  fresh 
surprise;  so  that,  to  one  who  went  to  consult  him  on 
almost  any  topic  of  remote  investigation,  it  was  al- 
most as  if  he  had  just  booked  up  expressly  on  the 

very  matter  in  hand.  His  mind  was  curiously  in- 
formed in  special  and  out-of-the-way  fields  of  knowl- 
edge. Details  of  natural  science,  the  history  of  law 
oases  (which  he  had  read  in  great  abundance  during 

a  winter's  leisure),  the  dry  technicalities  of  the  Civil 
Code,  the  gossip  and  minutiae  of  contemporary  history, 


94  THEODORE   PARKER. 

the  bleak  abstractions  of  metaphysics,  seemed  to  be 
about  equally  familiar.  Even  when  suffering  severe 
pain,  and  holding  his  head  in  both  hands  (as  I  have 
seen  him),  he  would  lay  hold  on  some  topic  of  thought 
or  knowledge,  with  the  fulness  of  learning  and  allu- 
sion, and  the  formal  exactness  of  method  he  was  so 
fond  of,  as  if  he  were  stating  the  outline  of  a  treatise 
or  essay. 

Still,  it  was  not  that  singular  wealth  of  erudition 
you  thought  of  first.  What  you  found  in  him  was 
rather  a  powerful,  rich,  and  greatly-gifted  nature,  to 
which  the  gathering  and  disbursing  of  its  ample 
stores  was  only  the  generous  play  of  its  native 
strength.  Accordingly,  the  capacious  understanding 
was  at  least  balanced  by  emotion  and  active  energy. 
That  large  nature  clung  to  personal  friendships  closer 
than  to  any  abstractions  of  the  brain.  In  the  midst 
of  his  various  lore,  that  heart  so  opened  in  love  to 
natural  things,  that  he  thought  even  of  an  insect 
tenderly,  and  knew  —  as  was  said  of  him,  with  per- 
haps some  friendly  exaggeration — every  bird  and 
wild-flower  in  New  England.  Nay,  he  took  the  text 
so  literally,  as  to  say  that  not  a  sparrow  can  fall  to  the 
ground  but  for  that  sparrows  good.  In  riper  years, 
watching  and  nursing  by  a  sick  bed,  or  plans  of  active 
charity  among  the  poor,  or  guarding  with  loaded 
weapons  the  liberty  of  a  fugitive  slave,  or  breasting 
the  storm  and  tumult  of  an  unfriendly  crowd  in  tem- 
pestuous controversy,  made  to  such  a  mind  as  natural 
a  play  of  its  forces,  as  easy  an  assertion  of  itself,  as 
the  gathering  up  of  knowledge  or  the  heat  of  strenu- 
ous debate.     The  personality  was  more  and  stronger 


TEMPER    IN    DI» 

than  tlie  intelligence.     The  thought  wa 

iken     What,  historically,  waa  out-  ph 
controversy  that  ia  alv  tinate 

tradition  and  fresh  conviction  wat  Dally,  the 

blending  of  thought  and  emotion,  a  warm  human 
experience  Bhaping  Itself  into  words.     It  is  ao  that 
by  is  laid  upon  ev<  ug  and  paseionate 

nature  to  Bpeak  what  in  its  day  and  houi 
it  to  Bpeak. 

live  and  imperious  as  that  natup 
and  imperative  thedesii  mp  itself  upon 

.  eneral  mind,  —  nay,  unable,  as  I 
understand  or  allow  fur  the  force  <-f  motives  in 
men  who  disagreed  with  him  in  matters  of  opinion 
or  conduct,  —  be   was   in   private   into  alto- 

gether courteous,  unobtrusive  of  his  own  opinion, 
generous  t<>  the  view  In-  most  gravely  opp  i  I  hi 
argument  he  might  aeem  uncompromising,  intol< 
Bcornful.  Impatient  of  contradiction,  confident  in 
•on,  sharp  in  denouncing  the  policy  or  the  man 
at  war  with  his  own  view  of  right,  the  public  COul  1 
nut,    very    likely,    BUBpect    this    mure    intimate    and 

human  Bide  of  him.     But  to  Ids  friends  the 

of  it  is  even  stronger  than   of    the  other  Bidft       In 

conversation  or  letter  lie  was  apt  t<>  speak  his  mind 

in  the  same    biting  and    sarcastic   way  as   in  public, 

Anything  cowardly  or  false,  or  what   Beemed  - 
could   •  lily  pardon,  and   perhaps  \  quick 

to  BUapect      But  when  he  knew  that  another  | 

making  up  his  mind  honestly  for  himself, — 
studying  any  point  of  controversy,  or  debating  a 
question  of  public  morals,  —  it  might  be  observed 


96  THEODORE  PARKER. 

that  he  was  careful  not  to  contradict,  not  to  urge 
his  own  opinion,  not  even  to  present  it.  A  sense  of 
intellectual  delicacy  and  honor  would  seem  to  hold 
him  from  forestalling,  by  a  word  or  hint,  the  freest 
action  of  another's  mind  or  conscience. 

And  so  his  incidental  expressions  of  his  own  opin- 
ion —  more  particularly  his  public  ones,  which  were 
positive  and  intolerant  —  were  often  curiously  at  va- 
riance with  the  kindness  and  courtesy  he  showed  in 
private  to  the  opposite  opinions.  Freedom  of  per- 
sonal criticism  he  always  said  that  he  valued  and 
wished  to  hear;  and  with  exceeding  patience  and 
kindness,  even  with  a  humility  which  might  seem 
strange  to  those  who  knew  him  less,  he  would  re- 
ceive the  very  plain  and  candid  expression  of  it  from 
one  who  ventured  to  take  him  at  his  word.  Friends 
of  his  were  pained  and  disturbed,  more  than  once, 
during  the  sharp  word-battles  of  his  last  ten  years, 
at  hasty  and  unjust  judgment  publicly  spoken  of  per- 
sons they  held  honorable  and  dear,  and  frankly  told 
him  so.  It  was  so  far  a  satisfaction  and  relief  to 
them,  that  he  took  all  such  words  kindly ;  that  he 
always  expressed  gratitude  for  any  criticism  or  cor- 
rection ;  that  in  some  instances  he  even  yielded  as 
to  a  point  of  judgment  or  feeling,  whether  or  not  he 
gave  any  public  expression  of  it.1 

1  Of  this  generosity  in  judgment,  which  has  not  generally  been 
recognized  in  him,  my  own  correspondence  with  him  has  several 
marked  proofs.  Almost  the  only  exception  was  in  a  short  letter  of 
his  in  censure  of  Dr.  Gaunett,  which  to  my  great  regret  was  pub- 
lished in  his  biography.  As  to  this,  Dr.  Gannett  says,  in  a  note  to 
me,  "I  do  not  know  to  what  information  Mr.  Parker  refers  ;  but,  I 
suppose,  to  a  story  which  he  must  have  believed,  and  which  I  re- 


HIS   0ONTHOVIB8IAL   WORK. 

But,  again,  opinion  in  him  was  never  wide  apart 
from  passion  In  private  communication  his  language 
was  always  kind  and  generous,  often  affectionate, 
cvrii  when  dealing  with  opinions  and  things  he  did 
not  love.  But  in  the  war  of  words,  where  sharp 
strok«  ven  and  taken,  t!.  i  ne  whose 

judgmenl  >re  colored  by  personal  feeling,  no 

one  who  showed  more  temper  in  argument,  or  more 
identified  the  principles  with  the  persons  of  hi 
tagonists;  no  one  who  made  bittei  or  wanner 

:  ried  more  of  intense  and 
breathing  Life  into  the  whole  disputed  realm  of  tech- 
nical theology  or  practical  moi 

Still,  it  was  with  no  hurry  or  impatience  that  he 
entered  into  the  conflict  which  afterwards  abf 
him  so  completely.     Bather  it  was  deliberal 
slowly,  after   Long  study,  with   large  training  and 
equipment,  after  considers  .  Life  lived 

quietly,  and  after  thi  •  ■  was  widened  by 

travel  and  much  acquaintance  with  men.  Be  was 
then  at  thi  thirty-four.    lie  had  measured  his 

powers  and  clearly  defined  his  work.  Slowly,  almost 
reluctantly,  he  was  drawn  on  to  that  post  in  the  front 
of  the  battle,  which  he  held  in  an  attitude  so  deter- 
mined, energetic,  defiant.     M  He  represented  and  pro- 

nember  seeing  in  one  or  two  English  Unitarian  papers  (which  I 
confess  vexed  me),  to  the  effect  that  I  had  eaid  something  in  the 
pulpit  about  the  Fugitive  Blare  Law,  which  I  did  not  say.  Then, 
as  now,  they  who  differed  were  tuo  eager  to  mi-:  nd  too 

prompt  in  misunderstanding  one  another.      Contradiction  seldom 
.  end  time  is  the  bast  oorrei  tire  of  mistake."    The 
publicity  given  to  Mr.  Parker's  letter  (Weias's  "Life  and  Corre- 
spondenuc,''  vol.  ii.  p.  llo)  justifies  this  persona]  reference. 


98  THEODORE  PARKER. 

claimed  a  revolution,  and  devoted  all  his  powers  of 
conscience  and  understanding  to  organize  the  great 
change  by  means  of  timely  justice,  that  he  might,  if 
possible,  prevent  Freedom  from  stepping  to  her  place 
through  blood." 

These  words  of  his  biographer  sufficiently  express 
the  position  in  which  Theodore  Parker  now  stood  be- 
fore the  world.  But  the  first  task  of  a  reformer  must 
always  be  with  men's  motives  and  their  faith.  It 
was  inevitable  that  he  should  begin  as  a  controver- 
sialist and  a  critic  of  religious  opinion.  In  this  he 
was  unsparing,  imperative,  scornful  in  speech,  as  his 
nature  compelled  him  to  be  in  dealing  with  what  to 
him  was  error.  But  his  positiveness  of  temper  and 
opinion,  his  hate  of  insincerity,  his  animosity  towards 
views  that  seemed  to  him  degradmg  and  wrong,  grew 
out  of  a  deep,  warm,  trustful  belief.  In  a  letter  an- 
swering some  inquiry  I  had  made  of  him  in  behalf  of 
a  friend,  in  reference  to  a  rumor  that  he  failed  to  find 
comfort  in  his  own  belief,  he  gives  his  own  position, 
as  it  looked  to  him,  in  these  words  :  — 

"  The  great  point  in  which  I  differ  from  most  Chris- 
tians is  this  :  I  believe  in  the  Infinite  God,  who  is  per- 
fectly wise,  perfectly  just,  perfectly  loving,  and  perfectly 
holy.  Of  course  he  must  have  a  purpose  in  creation,  a 
plan  in  creation,  —  both  perfect  and  consistent  with  this 
infinite  wisdom,  justice,  love,  and  holiness.  This  plan 
must  he  adapted  to  secure  the  ultimate  welfare  of  each 
creature  he  has  made,  and  must  be  perfect  in  detail  as  well 
as  in  the  sum.  How,  then,  can  I  fail  to  find  comfort  in 
sorrow,  —  even  in  the  worst  of  sorrows,  consciousness  of 
sin  ?     I  cannot.     I  have  unspeakably  more  delight  in  re- 


RELIGIOUS  VIEW. 

tigion,  more  consolation  in  any  private  griff,  more  b  . 
lion  in  looking  on  the  present  or  for  the   future,  than  ever 
.  when  I  trembled  ;  L     I  oerei 

laid,  never  th  :iment  attribute. I  to 

me.      Quite  the  contrary." 

As  with  his  religious,  so  with  his  moral  convic- 
tions. If  in  his  f  public  assault  on  public 
wrong  he  was  dogmatic,  imperative,  scornful,  —  that 
grew  out  of  a  personal   feeling  deep  and   sincere, 

I    emotion   still    more  than  intellectual   < 
tion  was  at  th.-  heart  of  his  argument  on  such  things. 
The  argum  aerate,  living,  L     It  was 

lally  endured  by  the  slave,  by  the  vic- 
tim of  drunkenness  or  .profligacy,  by  the  family  of 
the  drunkard,  by  the  crowded  and  vicious 
the  n.  poor.     In  latex  y<  dally  he  con- 

nected his  moral  doctrine  very  much  with  theori 
ethnology,  —  that  Lb,  the  facts  of  human  nature  seen 
on  the  broadest  scale;  and  with  statistics,  —  t!. 
the  lifts  of  human  Bociety  gathered  and  arrangi 
as  to  let  the  underlying  laws  of  them,  the  great  and 
genera]  facts,  be  seeu     But  even  in  stating  them  in 
the  widest  way  historically,  or  in  the  pre 

scientifically,  or  in  the  most  positive  way  dogmati- 
cally, he  would  ii'  that  they 
i  tement  or  discussion  would 
presently  he  relieved  by  some  Hash  of  sympathy 
or  tenderness  or  indignation;  ami  the  philosoph< 
reasoner,  at  the  heart  and  heat  of  his  argument,  was 
always  lost    in   the   man. 

If  we  now  look  back  upon  the  period  oi'  time  when 
his  public  labors  began,  we  shall  remember  that  it 


100  THEODORE   PARKER. 

was  a  time  when  the  controversies  that  have  vexed 
us  since  had  only  begun  to  take  on  the  shape  and 
acrimony  we  of  a  later  day  have  found  in  them. 
Theological  debate  was  lulled  after  the  strifes  of  fifty 
years  ago.  The  churches  held  each  its  own  position 
pretty  distinctly  and  quietly.  The  dispute  about  old 
doctrines  was  subsiding.  The  more  radical  questions 
that  have  stirred  us  since  had  not  yet  come  up,  ex- 
cept in  the  minds  of  a  few  who  were  studying  and 
thinking  by  themselves.  There  was  a  truce  in  the 
war  of  sects  and  creeds. 

The  question  of  Slavery  had  by  no  means  taken 
the  ominous  and  dread  proportions  which  it  assumed 
before  Mr.  Parker's  death.  Antislavery  was  an  effort, 
a  faith,  a  sentiment,  a  hope,  with  a  party  compara- 
tively few  and  unregarded.  Emancipation  was  a 
new  thing  in  the  British  West  Indies,  and  we  were 
rejoicing  in  the  peaceable  fruits  of  it  so  far,  blind  to 
the  practical  difficulties  still  to  be  met.  At  home, 
the  Texas  question  was  laid  to  rest,  and  only  the 
more  sagacious  (like  President  Adams)  knew  the 
drift  of  party  policy  which  soon  opened  up  so  rap- 
idly. Henry  Clay  had  predicted  that  slavery  would 
come  to  an  end  before  the  end  of  the  century ;  some 
sanguine  persons  thought  that  ten  years  more  —  the 
middle  of  the  century  —  would  see  the  question 
brought  to  its  final  issue,  and  universal  liberty  the 
law  of  the  land. 

The  cause  of  Temperance  was  just  then  entering 
on  its  most  interesting,  glowing,  hopeful  stage,  in  the 
"  Washingtonian  movement."  It  seemed  now  as  if 
the  decisive  experiment  had  been  made ;  as  if  the 


QUESTIONS   Of   PUBLIC    MORALS.  101 

One  needed  lesson  had  been  learned;  aa  it'  the  light 
and  hop  nought  home,  once  for  all, 

to  those  sunk  lowest  in  the  1  irruption  ; 

as  if  the  way  were  now  plain  I  p  all  the  forms 

of  at  least  one  dreadful   vice  from  the  f  the 

land.     No  suspicion  aa  yet  of  the  long  vain 

difficulties  and  mistalres,  the  license 
laws  and  penal  laws,  action  and  reaction  of  the  pop- 
ular mind  on  all  that  touches  a  popular  sin,  tenacity 
of  habit  and  depnu  ity  of  will,  variety  and  cunning  of 
the  disguises  that  cloak  the  infirmity  and  shame  of  a 
moral  malady.     How  much  of  all  this  i  wait- 

ing to  learn  from  tin;  ex]  of  the  years  that 

were  to   follow  : 

And,  again,  it  was  a  pretty  common  feeling  then 
that  tin-  time  had  gone  by  for  War  —  at   an;. 
war  on  a  ale — among  civilized  and  chris- 

tian powers,     it  was  really  believed  that  th< 
of  Christianity  in  ■.  and  the    P         movement 

in  particular,  had  gone  ao  far  as  that  I  Among  the 
more  scrupulous  and  humane,  the  question  whether 
any  forcible   resistance  to   anything    i  right, 

was  a  question  pressing  close  upon  the  conscience, — 
as  if  that  were  likely  to  he  the  practical  problem  next 
brought  forward  for  solution.  But  the  revolutdoi 
1848,  beginning  in  an  outburst  of  humanitarian  sen- 
timent, opened  an  era  Btrangely  different  To  say  noth- 
ing of  Biz  great  European  wars  —  in  Hungary, in  the 
Crimea,  in  Italy,  in  ( Icrmany,  in  Fiance,  in  Turkey  — 
enlisting  our  sympathies  so  Btrongly  on  one  .side  or 
the  other,  the  appalling  disasters  of  our  own  Civil 
War  have  opened  to  us  what  deeps  below  deeps  be- 


102  THEODORE   PARKER. 

neath  that  placid  surface  of  mild  emotion  with  which 
we  then  entertained  the  question  of  resistance  or  non- 
resistance,  of  peace  and  war  ! 

Such  was  the  generally  buoyant  and  hopeful  tone 
in  which  the  moral  questions  of  the  day  were  then 
regarded.  We  may  well  confess  to  a  little  self-com- 
placency, a  superficial  self-confidence,  —  as  if,  after 
all,  the  time  of  martyrdom  had  been  mostly  lived 
through ;  as  if  the  great  work  of  Eeform  could  be 
carried  on  with  fine  sentiments,  and  delicate  hands, 
and  hearts  safe  from  the  great  storms  of  passion  and 
fear  that  had  beaten  in  the  past !  Some  of  us  well 
remember  how  completely  that  feeling  was  uppermost 
at  the  time  referred  to.  The  pure  fervor  of  those 
words  in  which  Channing  closed  his  last  public  ad- 
dress did  but  echo  the  hopeful  and  sanguine  strain ; 
did  but  reflect  the  aspect  in  which  the  gravest  issues 
were  regarded,  not  merely  in  the  buoyancy  of  youth, 
but  in  the  deliberate  conviction  of  ripe  years. 

But  it  is  not  the  way  of  Providence  that  any  ques- 
tion vitally  touching  the  rights  and  welfare  of  hu- 
manity, or  the  progress  of  Divine  truth,  should  be 
settled  on  such  cheap  and  easy  terms.  If  only  that 
men  may  know  what  their  principles  are,  what  depths 
of  character  and  experience  they  involve,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  hold  them  as  possessions  attacked  and  fought 
for.  To  know  the  preciousness  of  truth,  it  must  be 
slowly  and  painfully  disentangled  from  a  mass  of 
error.  The  battle  cannot  be  won  for  us  at  second 
hand.  Each  generation  has  its  own  warfare  to  en- 
counter, and  its  own  victories  to  win.  What  seemed 
to  us  then  a  hopeful,  busy,  and  prosperous  advance 


KATURE  OF  THE  CONFLICT.         103 

towards  the  easy  achievement  of  truth  and  right ; 
what  seems  now  to  have  been  a  somewhat  superficial 
and  deceitful  mood  of  moral  emotion,  or  even  a  lull 
and  suspension  of  the  .  —  had  to  I 

up.     A  generation  must  be  In  the  phases  of  a 

conflict  about  truths  which  the  heart  holds  d 
and  principles  which  the  <■■  holds  holiest, — a 

conflict  of  which  none  r  end, 

—  that  a  grander  work  may  be  done,  and  a  nobler 
faith   may  grow  from  the  r  life. 

It  was  joat  this  conflict  which  Theodon    1' 
s<M-nis  to  I  tmmissioned  to 

II  rly  as  any  one  to  proclaim  it     Be  threw 

himself  into  it    with  all  tin*  wealth  «»f  his   under- 
standing, and  all  the  energy  of  his  will      II-'  v. 
ly  identified  with 
11  to  mind  a  single  event,  <>r  publi       '     :'  criti- 
cal moment  in  the  whole  stir  and  stress  of  the  ] 

in  which  his  voice  was  not  one  of  '  rand 

decisive,  and  his  word  —  bold,  clear,  ready,  positive — 

was  ii-:  among  the  first  *  public  mind. 

And  yet  he  bo  far  aha]  teling 

then,   that   he  alw  I  let   in 

the  outset  was  a  him.     II«'  appar- 

ently expected  to  find  his  words  accepted  and  as» 
to  at  once,     II"  was  only  carrying  <>nt  the  principles 
all  liberal  thinkers  had  proclaimed     The  <>ne  further 
service  he  would   render  musl  me  to 

all  who  professed  freedom  of  opinion  in  religious 
thin  j 

In  his  earliest   discourses  addressed  to  the  public 
we   observe   these  two  things  :  a   positive,  dogmatic, 


104  THEODOKE  PARKER. 

almost  disdainful  way  of  laying  down  the  main  lines 
of  his  argument, — and  this  as  clearly  and  fully  in  his 
very  first  words  as  ever  afterwards ;  and,  with  this, 
a  certain  confiding,  poetic,  sentimental  way  of  stating 
his  ground  of  "  absolute  religion,"  as  if  the  world  had 
only  to  hear  and  forthwith  accept  the  new  gospel  in 
all  its  simplicity.  These  two,  strongly  marked  at  first, 
continued  together  unabated  to  the  end. 

Considering  how  much  of  a  controversialist  he  was, 
how  familiar  with  the  history  and  criticism  of  every 
form  of  belief,  how  generally  known  as  assailing  other 
men's  opinions,  it  is  remarkable  how  self-confident 
he  always  was  in  asserting  his  own.  It  is  as  if  he 
had  never  known  a  doubt.  It  is  as  if  there  were  no 
shading-off  in  his  mind  between  absolute  belief  and 
absolute  disbelief,  —  as  in  the  sky  of  the  tropics  there 
is  no  twilight,  but  night  shuts  down  dark  against  the 
brightness  of  the  day.  As  I  understood  him  to  say, 
he  never  knew  that  period  of  transition  which  most 
inquirers  must  pass  through.  The  world  of  mingled 
truth  and  error,  of  right  and  wrong,  lay  before  his  eye 
with  sharp  contrasts  of  white  light  and  black  shadow, 
—  like  the  surface  of  the  moon,  where  there  is  no 
softening  atmosphere,  but  every  shade  is  a  blot  of  ab- 
solute dark  on  a  field  of  pure  and  shining  white.  It 
did  not  occur  to  him  that  where  he  and  other  men 
differed,  he  might  possibly  be  mistaken ;  that  there 
might  possibly  be  some  truth  —  of  experience,  if  not 
of  fact  or  philosophy  —  in  the  doctrine  he  attacked. 
And  so  he  hated  what  to  him  was  error.  He  could 
not  see  any  good  in  things  evil,  or  any  right  in  the 
fabric  built  on  a  foundation  he  failed  to  recognize. 


MODES   Of   RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT.  105 

With  most  men,  the  best  part  of  their  religion  ia 
fur  from  being  that  which  lies  in  the  clear,  glaring 
light  of  consciousness,  or  what  they  could  give  the 
best  account  of  to  themselves  or  others.  '!'].• 
light  atmosphere  of  mystery  in  which  our  liv. 
wrapped  —  from  clear  light  shading  off  imperceptibly 
to  obe  rad  gloom  —  most 

of  oar  pious  thoughts  and  i  lie.     In  Theodore 

Parker  it  was  almost  as  if  this  shadowy  lid  not 

exist     Where  iny  truth  at  all,  It 

;  ive,  dear,  dogmatic,  —  do  half-truth  of  the  emo- 
tion merely,  do  mystery  haunting  the  imagination 
ami  secretly  magnetizing  the  thought  Where  other 
men  spoke  of  a  hope  reaching  forth  to  the  afterlife, 
a  reverent  looking  forward,  ■  trembling  trust 
ardent  oonfidei  biva     With  him,  he  said,  im- 

mortality was   no  wish   or  dream  or  hope,     [t 
more  than  belief:  it   was  knowledge.     He  knew  he 

immortal:  he  felt  it  in  every  fibre  of  the 
Anything  less  than  that  was  unworthy  the  nam.'  of 
belief  at  all.     Any  demand  of  proof  was  an  imper- 
tinence.    Any  offer  of  historical  evidence   was   an 
affront  to  the  living  faith. 

So  with  tin'  love  of  God  for  hi-  creatures,  and  the 

ly  II"    i  IT   them   in   a   future  state.      It 

was  not  a  thing  to  he  waited  for  and  trusted  in  with 

aw.-  and    trembling,   with  dn-ad  and   sham.'   l"^r    we 

might  do<  be  worthy  to  behold  the  Holiest  and  live. 
—  lest  the  "d<.ri«'s  of  the  life  beyond  might  he  ! 
than  our  aspirations  or  our  d<  He  would  em- 

1        •  without  a   shade  of  misgiving,  for  every  man, 
the  prospect  of  a  world  beyond  the  grave.     lie  knew 


106  THEODORE  PARKER. 

God  must  mean  the  best  for  every  creature  ;  that 
not  even  guilt  can  long  be  a  barrier  from  His  love ; 
that  not  the  wickedest  of  men  should  be  ever  afraid 
to  die. 

Again,  the  presence  and  action  of  God  in  human 
life,  —  it  is  now,  here,  always,  or  else  never  and  no- 
where. There  is  no  middle  ground  between  atheism 
and  the  sense  of  a  present  Deity.  God's  miracles, 
real  miracles,  are  in  the  movements  of  the  heavens 
and  in  the  fresh  growth  of  every  spring-time.  To 
set  apart  any  class  of  events  and  acts,  and  call  them 
miraculous,  or  any  special  evidence  of  God's  power,  is 
as  much  as  to  deny  that  power  in  other  events  and 
things.  The  revering  and  tender  associations  which 
make  so  many  cling  to  the  miracles  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament and  believe  in  them  —  illogically,  perhaps;  at 
least,  rather  with  heart  than  head  —  had  no  place 
with  him  at  all. 

Thus  his  theory  of  Christianity  was  far  from  com- 
plete, and  his  judgments  of  other  men  were  far  from 
faultless.  Nor  was  his  theory  quite  consistent  with 
itself.  Especially  where  he  stood  most  widely  apart 
from  the  general  sense  of  Christendom,  and  most 
gloried  in  the  difference,  —  in  his  theory  of  sin  in  the 
soul,  —  it  seems  impossible  to  reconcile  his  eager  op- 
timism with  his  godly  hatred  of  all  forms  of  evil  in 
the  concrete.  But  to  no  man  is  it  given  to  compre- 
hend all  truth,  or  to  fulfil  all  righteousness.  They 
have  little  ground  to  censure  his  rejection  of  the  "  Sa- 
tanic element "  from  his  theology,  who  have  not  shared 
or  excelled  the  ardor  of  his  moral  conviction. 

Out  of  a  certain  defect  in  his  mind  which  I  have 


HIS   SERVICE   TO    RELIGION.  107 

tried  to  indicate,  he  would  often  seem  not  in  the 
to  understand  or  do  j  i  the  minds  of 

And  so  there  was  a  vein  of  misunderstanding  and 
injustice,  on  both  rhich  made  bitter  and  false 

a  large  part  of  his  controversy  with  the  popuk 
ology.    I  do  not  remember  a  single  statement  hi 
made  of  the-  doctrine  of  his  opponents  which  they 
would  be  willing  to  accept,  while  he  did  make  maoy 
statements  of  their  doctrine  which  th< 
wilfully  offensive  misrepresentations  and  caricatures. 
II     generosity  to  the  persona]  character  of  an  oppo- 
nent whom  he  deemed  Bincere  mad.'  the  more  remark- 
able tl  -in  and  scorn  whi.-h  be  visited  upon 
things   dear  to  their  heart   and  cherished  in  their 

iaith. 

In  two  direction-,  especially,  his  ought  to 

be  thankfully  acknowledged  even  by  those  who  think 
his  fundamental  opinions  dangerous  and  wrong,  It 
is  in  evidence  that  his  words  were  the  first  to  break 

ell  of  superstitious  terror  in  many  a  mind  that 
waited  only  for  the  trumpet-tone  of  Buch 

away  the   spectres   of  an  evil    dream,  and   turn 
religion  from  a  slavish  fear  into  the  glad  lil  • 
child  of  God.     An  1,  again,  there  was  a  form  of 
ticism,  an  undercurrent  of  hostility  to  the  popular 

which  was  running  fast  to  an  open  and  mock- 
ing infidelity,  taking  more  and  moi  usual  and 
materialistic  tone.  The  arm's-length  and  puny  oppo- 
sition which  such  unbelief  as  this  finds  in  the  paid 
pulpit  of  an  established  creed  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  clear,  bold  word  of  the  independent 
thinker. 


1C8  THEODORE   PARKER. 

By  sheer  mental  force  and  wealth  of  knowledge 
this  man  headed  the  column  of  insurrection  against 
the  Church.  But,  in  doing  it,  he  gave  a  new  type  and 
tone  to  that  hostility.  Under  his  lead  heresy  became 
more  pious,  more  thoughtful,  more  humane  than  the 
orthodoxy  it  opposed.  Hundreds  were  saved  from  a 
reckless  and  blank  atheism,  because  they  saw  his  in- 
dependent vigor  of  thought  and  his  unsparing  attacks 
on  error  joined  to  a  positive  faith  in  the  Divine 
providence  and  law,  an  absolute  loyalty  to  right,  a 
confidence  clear,  ardent,  and  unwavering  in  the  im- 
mortal life  of  every  human  soul.  It  was  wonderful 
how  wide  his  words  spread  and  with  what  eagerness 
they  were  received,  —  the  only  words,  teaching  any 
free  form  of  piety,  that  went  as  far  as  civilized  men 
followed  the  narrowing  track  across  forest  and  prairie, 
or  wherever  two  or  three  were  gathered  together  to 
grope  their  way  out  of  the  tangle  and  obscurity  of  the 
theological  growths  around  them. 

In  the  field  of  moral  and  political  debate  there  was 
one  service  he  rendered  which  no  other  did,  which 
perhaps  no  other  could,  render  so  well.  He  carried 
into  that  field  all  the  wealth  of  a  mind  very  richly 
stored,  a  great  fund  of  various  erudition,  a  breadth 
and  masculine  vigor  of  understanding,  which  re- 
deemed the  debate  from  partisan  littleness  and  lifted 
it  upon  the  plane  of  the  larger  ethics.  We  know 
how  apt  such  discussions  are  to  degenerate  into  mere 
vaporing  declamation,  into  vituperative  wrangling, 
into  pitiful  sects  and  schisms.  We  know  how  hard 
it  is  even  for  a  rich  and  highly  cultivated  intellect, 
that  gives  itself  wholly  to  them,  to  avoid  the  mistake 


HIS 

and  harm.     Mr.  Parker  did  not  entirely  tins 

danger.     There  was  passion  and  there  was  injustice 
in  his  speech.     But  that  was  the  honest  flaming-ont 
of  moral  wrath  ;  and  it  is  a  glory  to  a  man  to  be 
capable  of  I ; 
The  great  gain  was,  when  a  man  whose  profession 

and  hent  of  thought  turned  him  towards  what  IS  high, 

abstract,  infinite,  —  whose  studies  made  him  at  home 
in  the  wide   field  of  history,  —  whose  professional 
walk  led  him  into  scholarly  and  refirn 
well  as  among  the  lowly  and  the  poor,  —  when  Buch 

a  man  Btood  in  tin;  front  rank  as  a  champion  of  I 
reform      It  was  do  vague  and  theoretical  moralizing 
he  brought  to  the  lebate,  no  mere  polish  of 

accomplished  oratory,  no  mere  denunciation  of  the 
evil,  or  eloquent  vindication  of  the  right     [1  i 

.lint-  judgment  of  men  and   things,  BUch  that  in 
all  records  of  the  sort  we  have  nei  i  the  like. 

Industry  like  that  of  a  blue-book 
diction  like  Burke's,  moral  passion  like  thai  which 
flames  in  Milton,  might  he  gathered  in  a  si;: 
siona]  discourse     Thi  re  was  the  massing  of  materials 
for  other  men's  independent  judgment,  and  the  mar- 
shalling of  them  so  that  their  statement  should  1"'  an 

argument    That  self-ordained  tribunal  commanded 
the  attention  as  much  of  those  who  hated  and  op- 
posed as  of  those  who  admired  and  applauded.     1' 
fore  its  terrible  bar  every  event,  every  deed  of  evil 
policy  and  every  prominent  actor  in  it.  had  to  he 

*ed,  to  abide  something  like  the  verdict  ol 
terity,  pronounced  by  that  fearless  voice  from  those 
unsparing  lips.     Unsparing  of  honest  prejudice,  of 


110  THEODORE  PARKER. 

gentler  feeling  —  unjust,  no  doubt,  often  to  the  mo- 
tives of  men,  and  too  easily  believing  ill  of  them 1  — 
yet  it  was  a  tribunal  which  extorted  hearing  and 
commanded  respect. 

Thus  that  breadth  of  vision,  that  wide  sweep  of 
knowledge,  prevented  the  debate  being  ever  narrowed 
to  party  bigotries  and  sectarian  aims.  To-day,  the 
boldest  words  as  to  some  affront  from  slavery  upon 
the  public  conscience ;  to-morrow,  a  plea  for  the  ig- 
norant, the  lowly,  the  degraded  in  our  own  city 
streets  :  now,  vehement  exposure  and  denunciation 
of  some  man's  act,  or  verdict  on  some  man's  char- 
acter, unsparing  in  its  bitterness;  and  again,  some 
tender  breathing  of  filial  piety,  some  act  of  delicate 
sympathy  and  kindness  for  distress,  some  word  of 
gentle  consolation  to  those  that  mourn  and  labor  and 
are  heavy -laden.  Large  as  was  the  field  of  action, 
rich  and  various  as  were  the  gifts  he  brought  to  labor 
in  it,  we  find  in  his  life  a  symmetry,  a  singleness  of 
purpose,  a  persistency  of  aim,  a  consistency  of  motive, 
such  as  we  rarely  find  in  far  lower  and  narrower 
ranges  of  men's  lives.  Such  a  life  can  well  afford 
to  acknowledge  greater  defects  of  opinion  and  graver 
errors  of  judgment  than  can  be  pointed  out  in  him. 

I  will  return  for  a  single  word  to  the  religious 
tone  and  motive  of  the  life.     Mr.  Parker's  creed  has 

1  For  example,  he  persisted  in  believing  the  strange  calumny 
(which  would  be  insulting  to  a  border  ruffian)  —  impossible  in  what 
it  charged,  and  promptly  denied  —  that  Dr.  Dewey,  a  man  of  the 
tenderest  filial  piety,  had  said  he  would  ' '  send  his  own  mother  back 
to  slavery"  to  sustain  the  law  ;  and  could  not  be  induced  to  admit 
that  Daniel  Webster  was  honest  in  dreading  a  war  of  Disunion, 
which  he  was  himself  soon  after  incessantly  predicting. 


Ills    MOOD    OK    1'IKTV.  Ill 

been  called  "a  humane  and  tender  optimism,  which 
strove  to  embrace  all  the  facts  with  something  like 
Divine  impartiality."  If  this  optimism  was  strongly 
contrasted  by  the  intolerant  tone  he  often  took  in 
public  debate,  then  on  the  other  hand  it  is  borne 
out  with  singular  harmony  and  i  •■  i  y  by  what 

re  permitted  to  read  of  his  private  papera    I 
of  character   needs   the   nurture   of    solituda     The 
minutes  of  those  many  Lonely  midnight  fa 
ter  with  curious  precision  the 
that  nurture.     The  one  ehara 
in  them,  the  one  I  which  perhaps 

required  just  this  testimony  to  make  il 
quately  known,  is  the  incessant  reverting  to  the  mood 
of  piety.     Aspiration  after  moral  purity,  after  i 

:nd  true    spirit  in  doing   the  work   of   life,  is 
earnest  and  constant.      If  it  were  not  for  the  i in : . 

visible  result  in  the  work  done  and  the  batt] 
the  impression  would  be  almost  that  of  a  | 

a  devotee. 

\  i  I  this,  too,  is  in  strict  consistency  with  his 
era!  theory  of  religious  things.  Supplication  for  par- 
ticular blessings  and  special  "  provideii  if  the 
Unchangeable  were  to  be  moved  by  human  entreaty, 
he  shunned  as  idolatrous  and  profani  I  d  the 
phrases  of  his  devotion  contain  the  formal  den 
that  doctrine  of  prayer  which  hat  held  and 
argued  for  so  earnestly  by  many  of  the  most  pious 
men.  But  if  prayer  signifies  the  earnest  seeking  of 
the  Holiest,  "if  haply  we  might  feel  after  him  and 
find  him  ;"  if  it  implies  absolute  reliance,  joyful  con- 
fidence, the  power  both  to  find  and  to  impart  conso- 


112  THEODORE   PARKER. 

lation  in  human  griefs  from  that  heavenly  source,  — 
then  the  "  gift  of  prayer  "  has  been  bestowed  on  few 
men  in  larger  measure.  Many,  who  were  distant  and 
strangers  in  his  lifetime,  sincerely  thought  him  an 
enemy  of  Christian  truth.  But  such  may  find  in  this 
record  now,  if  not  complete  harmony  of  soul,  at  least 
a  deeper  life-current,  which  blended  the  warmest 
springs  of  devotion  in  the  strength  that  battled  as 
rudely  against  men's  cherished  beliefs  as  against  their 
rooted  wrongs.  Perhaps  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  in  piety  of  just  this  type  we  find  the  living  link 
which  binds  what  is  purest  in  past  forms  of  religion 
with  what  is  best  in  those  that  are  to  be.  If  an 
"  age  of  reason  "  is  to  follow  the  "  ages  of  faith,"  it 
was  well  that  one  brave  pioneer  should  share  so 
largely  in  the  characteristic  life  of  each. 

Theodore  Parker  broke  down  in  the  midst  of  his 
unfinished  work,  and  died  before  the  age  of  fifty.  In 
his  absolute  confidence  in  the  Wisdom  and  Love  that 
govern  all  things,  he  could  call  to  mind  barely  one 
thing — his  childless  lot — that  he  would  have  wished 
otherwise.  Almost  to  the  last,  he  was  able  to  speak 
with  cheerfulness,  even  pleasantry,  of  his  passing 
strength.  Of  course,  it  must  have  been  with  one  deep 
pang  of  keen  sorrow  and  disappointment.  He  had 
identified  his  life  so  completely  with  his  work !  and 
the  task  was  but  hardly  begun,  even  then  growing 
larger  and  harder  upon  his  hands.  It  is  the  fallacy 
of  a  strong  heart  and  living  conscience  that  God 
cannot  spare  his  laborers  from  their  task;  that  the 
work  is  theirs,  not  His ;  that  they  are  responsible 
for  the  result  as  well  as  for  the  deed.    In  those  fifteen 


THE    KNJ».  113 

years  of  strife,  had  the  bondage  of  bigotry  and  error 
been  much  loosened  1  —  had  the  chains  of  the 
grown  any  lighter?  —  had  the  curse  of  intemperance 
and  licentiousness,  the  dishonesties  and  inhumanities 

le,  the  grief  of  hopeless  poi  • 
in   the    community  he    lived   in   and   labored   for? 
Might  it  not  seem,  possibly,  as  if  the  labor  had  been 
in  vain, —  at  I  if  a  few  years  more  ought  I 

given,  to  save  it  from  being  I 

Questions  like  these  must  com< — we  cannot  tell 
often  or  how  keenly  —  when  the  over-w< 
laborer  rests  at  night,  and  contrasts  t!.  .har- 

vests of  tin:  afternoon  with  the  glow  and  confident 
promise  of  the  morning  But  a  man  can  live  only 
once.     If  he  has  given  his  own  meastu  cgth, 

it  be  has  brought  bis  own  best  gift,  it  is  all  thi  I 
iked  of  him,  <>r  by  him.     Force,  say  the  - 
is  never  lost,  hut  <>nly  takes  new  forma 

tainly  this   is   true,  if  anywhere,  then  of  mural  : 
lie  has  cast  in  his  own  life  as  on.-  of  tip—'  innumer- 
able forces  by  which  the  life  of  Humanity  is  made 
complete     One  is  taken,  and  many  another  L 


VI. 
A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

THE  Secession  of  1860,  and  the  Civil  War  which 
presently  followed,  introduced  a  period  in  sev- 
eral ways  favorable  to  the  liberal  movement  in  the- 
ology. It  was,  in  fact,  as  much  a  breaking  up  of  old 
lines  of  sect,  and  a  liberalizing  of  the  public  mind  on 
religious  questions,  as  it  was  the  introduction  of  a 
new  era  in  politics.  There  was  a  great  shaking  to- 
gether of  all  sorts  of  opinions  in  camp-life.  In  the 
readjusting  of  parties,  sects  as  well  as  sections  came 
to  have  quite  a  new  understanding  of  one  another. 
In  the  heat  of  the  new  enthusiasm,  old  prejudices 
were  fast  melted  away.  Persons  before  obnoxious  for 
their  radicalism  now  found  themselves  quite  in  the 
current  of  popular  thought.  It  was  no  accident  that 
the  one  great  national  work  of  organized  charity —  the 
Sanitary  Commission — was  due  to  the  genius  of  the 
best  recognized  leader  of  the  liberal  forces ;  or  that 
the  same  week  which  saw  the  surrender  of  Eichmond 
saw  also  the  carrying  out  of  his  scheme  of  a  National 
Conference  designed  to  give  new  coherence  and  exec- 
utive vigor  to  the  loose  and  scattered  ranks  of  Uni- 
tarian ism. 

There  is,  accordingly,  a  very  special  sense  in  which 
the  period  that  has  followed,  with  the  wider  scale  and 


IIKNUY    WHITNEY    BBLLO¥  115 

greater   variety   of  denominational   activity,  is    best 
represented  by  the  name  of  Dr,  Bellows      B 
is  quite  t  ire  the  amount  of 

loss  the  Unitarian  body  has  Buffered  by  it.  Bnt  it 
may  be  said  here,  that  he  saw  with  singular  distinct- 
ness both  tlic  opportunity  offered  and  the  conditions 
under  which  it  had  to  be  met  Bis  \  iew  took  in  the 
field,  as  perhaps  no  one  before  him  had  conceived  it, 
at  once  so  widely  and  bo  vividly  :  and  lx-  recognized 
with  great  decision,  even  it"  he  did  not  formulate,  the 
terms  of  that  larger  alliance  by  which  the 
libera]  theology  must  henceforth  be  carried  on.  Bis 
was,  besides,  one  of  the  few  nam< 

Living  links  between  the  later  and  the 
earlier  generation.  The  Unitarian  body  was  greatly 
fortunate,  that,  while  there  were  still  others  to  bring 
it  wealth  of  thought  and  sufficiency  of  scholarship, 
was  this  one  leader,  trusted  and  beloved,  to 
help  it  towards  a  generous  breadth  of  fellowship, 
and  something  like  energy  of  concerted  action 
But  perhaps  the  period  before  us  is  still  I 
characterized  by  a  much  young  of  men,  who, 

with  less  of  critical  study  or  defined  opinion  than 
their  predecessors,  have  a  readiness  in  action,  a  \ 
of  self-assertion,  a  directness  of  method,  and  a  range 
of  popular  sympathy  that  set  them  quit  from 

the  older  school,  and  give  them  a  new  and  different 
hold  upon  the  future.  We  have  especially  to  i 
nize  a  group  that  are  working  with  great  spirit 
and  independence  at  a  distance  from  what  was  be- 
fore the  only  centre  of  our  action;  and  another 
group  who  have  come  into  the  Unitarian   body  from 


116  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

outside,  seeking  more  liberty  of  thought,  and  bringing 
with  them  the  tradition  and  the  habit  of  greater  re- 
ligious zeal.  The  position  of  the  one  and  the  new 
associations  of  the  other  are  both  favorable  to  freedom 
of  opinion.  Neither  of  them  feels  the  strong  conser- 
vative bond  of  the  Congregationalist  tradition,  or  is 
held  so  firmly  by  reverent  and  loyal  memory  of  hon- 
ored names. 

In  short,  Unitarianism,  so  far  as  it  is  destined  to 
survive  at  all,  must  understand  that  it  has  outgrown 
its  old  theological  limits ;  and,  as  it  was  once  the  lib- 
eral side  of  the  old  Congregational  body,  so  now  it 
must  know  itself  as  the  Christian  side  of  the  broader 
scientific  movement  of  our  time.  As  a  part  of  this 
broader  movement,  it  may  still  retain  its  intellectual 
dignity  and  its  interest  for  thinking  men,  whatever 
its  denominational  strength  or  weakness.  Apart 
from  that,  it  has  but  a  feeble  life  of  its  own,  and  will 
be  soon  scattered  to  pieces,  or  else  merged  in  the 
superior  energy  and  the  increasing  liberality  of  the 
larger  bodies  around  it. 

That  result  is  freely  predicted  for  it  by  eager  sec- 
tarians who  oppose  it,  and  by  radical  thinkers  who 
secede  from  it.  If  such  a  result  is  to  be  averted,  it 
must  be  by  maintaining  a  positive  religious  life  of  its 
own,  with  its  foundation  of  deep  conviction  both  in- 
tellectual and  moral ;  and  at  the  same  time  by  guard- 
ing that  absolute  liberty  of  opinion,  that  freedom 
from  theological  prejudice  and  restraint,  which  will 
entitle  it  to  move  in  equal  alliance  with  the  science 
and  literature  of  the  time. 

Now  how  far  liberty  of  opinion  is  consistent  with 


THE    LIBERAL   POSITION.  117 

religious    sympathy   and    harmony   of    action, 
matter  for  the  present  of  very  donhtful  experiment. 
Most  persons,  when  they  speak  of  Liberty  of  opinion, 
silently  take  for  granted  the  limits  they  then. 
respect.    Thus  the  "right  of  private  judgment,"  with 
the  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century,  included  also 
the  "  sufficiency  of  the   Scriptures."    The 
claimed  by  the  early  Unitarians  assumed  the  whole 
apparatus  of  miracle   and  relation.     The 

Reformers  did  not  feel  any  inconsistency  in  demand- 
ing that  freedom  of  conscience  should  be  within  the 
limits  of  an  evangelical  creed  ;  or  the  Unitarians,  in 
assuming  that  it  must  accept  the  absolute  authority 
of  Christ     Probably  we  Bhould  demur,  most  of 
;i  religious  fellowship  which  should  include  outright 
denial  of  God  or  immortality,  or  outright  prol 
of  communism  or  tree  Love,  however  honest  it  might 
And  when  we  speak  of  liberty  of  "pinion,  or 
breadth  of  religious  communion,  it 
essary,  at  starting,  to  find  out  how  much  we  really 

mean   by   those   terms. 

It  appears  to  me  that  the   only  answer   we   can 
give  that  question,  is  one  which  absolutely  disclaims 

the  drawing  of  all  lines  of  religious  fellowship  at 
men's  speculative  opinions  about  anything.  All  hon- 
est opinions  are  matter  of  fair  discussion,  Bfl 
individual  minds.  1  think  they  should  make  the 
lines  of  division  among  men  only  just  so  far  as  they 
correspond  with  the  natural  groups,  spontaneous  and 
unforced,  into  which  men  necessarily  fall.  Especially, 
it  appears  to  me,  it  is  quite  too  late  in  the  day  to 
draw  these  lines  on  points  of  theological  doctrine, — 


118  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

that  is,  on  points  which  have  and  can  have  no  sci- 
entific valne  and  no  possibility  of  verification.  To  a 
certain  extent,  those  lines  will  be  drawn  so  naturally. 
It  is  not  likely  that  a  believer  in  the  Pope's  infal- 
libility will  seek  the  sympathy  of  free  religionists ; 
or  that  a  scientific  radical  wTould  complain  of  exclu- 
sion from  a  Baptist  conference.  When  the  case 
comes,  let  it  be  provided  for. 

But,  in  speaking  of  a  communion  nominally  free, 
I  wish  to  be  understood  as  meaning  all  which  that 
term  can  possibly  imply.  I  take  for  granted  that 
some  serious  purpose  is  meant  by  voluntarily  joining 
any  religious  organization  at  all ;  and  where  there  is 
a  serious  purpose,  —  even  no  more  than  the  desire 
to  hear,  and  perhaps  learn,  what  some  new  doctrine 
is,  —  I  hold  that  no  person  should  have  it  hinted,  or 
in  any  way  implied,  that  any  difference  of  opinion 
from  the  rest  puts  him  at  all  in  the  position  of  a 
stranger  or  outsider,  so  long  as  he  chooses  to  stay 
and  claim  the  sympathy  due  to  a  fellow-man.  I  do 
not  know  whether  a  church,  or  a  religious  body,  can 
be  built  upon  so  broad  a  platform ;  but  as  liberal 
men  I  do  not  think  we  have  a  right  to  do  anything 
to  narrow  it,  or  that  as  liberal  Christians  we  have  a 
right  to  exclude,  or  seem  to  exclude,  any  who  de- 
sire any  sort  of  help,  light,  or  comfort  from  that 
source.  x 

I  am  stating  that  broad  ground  of  fellowship  which 

1  This,  evidently,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  question  as  to  the 
choice  or  qualifications  of  a  religious  teacher,  which  must  be  set- 
tled not  by  abstract  theory,  but  by  personal  considerations  and  the 
circumstances  of  the  case. 


TERMS   01   CHRISTIAN   FELLOWSHIP.  119 

most  Protestant  bodies  seem  to  be  coming  to,  con- 
sciously  or   DOt       In   many   which    <  all    t: 
orthodox,  all  decent  people  are  well  mei 

mimmicants,  and  no  questions  But 

it  is  desirable  that  the  principle  should  be  distu 
stated  and  accepted,  and  Dot  acted 
I  ially  it    is  desirable   that  it   should    l  e 

itural  working-out  of  opinion,  not  as  it'  we  were 
driven  to  i'  illogically  by  way  of  subterfuge,     I 
it  is  the  logical  result  <>f  the  scienti 

Ogy,  Which  COmeS  in  OUT  day  to  take  tl. 

dogmatic  and  controvi  tdy.     To        I    i,  it  is 

only  necessary  t<>  1<"  b 

I  must  add  a  word   i  of  the 

nam.'   "Christian,"    as    applied    to   so   loose   terms    of 

communion  a.-  I  have  desa  LI 

The  name  was  at  first,  probably  enough,  i 
term  of  reproach,  or  at  least  Bimply  as  the  di 

mail  party  or  group  of  persons  at  Antioch.    The 

early  defenders  of  Christianity  played  a  good 
upon  the,  word,  for  as  pronounced  in  Greek  it  d< 
"the  party  of  the  good"  as  well  as  "the  party  of 

Christ."  *     And  it  has  i  I  i  have, 

tl  meanings,  either  of  which  may  be  true  in  a 
particular  connection. 

It  is  used   in  a  broad  way,  historically,  to  distin- 
guish the  Christian  world  in  general  from    1' 
Mahometan ; 

It  is  used  by  Catholics,  eccl  illy,  to  mean 

those  who  accept  the  government,  creed,  and  discipline 
of  the  Roman  Church; 

1   A.a  d(  rived  from  xpvvtos  or  from  xpi<tt^s- 


120  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

It  is  used  by  the  Evangelical  sects,  theologically, 
to  denote  those  who  accept  the  orthodox  scheme  of 
salvation  through  Christ; 

It  is  used  by  many  religious  bodies,  technically,  to 
signify  those  who  have  been  personally  converted,  and 
pledged  to  lead  a  Christian  life ; 

It  is  used  by  Unitarians  of  the  older  school,  as 
opposed  to  deist  or  rationalist,  to  describe  those  who 
accept  the  Christian  revelation  in  its  strict  super- 
naturalistic  sense ; 

It  is  used  by  Unitarians  of  a  newer  school  to  de- 
scribe those  who  accept  Jesus  personally  as  their 
authoritative  teacher  and  guide ; 

It  is  used  by  some  transcendental  thinkers  —  as  it 
was  used  with  great  fervor  of  insistence  by  Theodore 
Parker  —  in  a  sense  identical  with  "  absolute  re- 
ligion," and  by  many  others,  still  more  loosely,  in  a 
sense  identical  with  simple  moral  goodness ; 

And,  still  again,  it  is  used  in  literature  to  desig- 
nate not  so  much  (I  should  say)  virtue  in  general, 
but  a  particular  class  of  moral  qualities,  sympa- 
thies, and  aspirations,  which  it  has  been  the  special 
work  of  Christianity  to  foster  and  educate,  —  chiefly 
charity,  piety,  and  chastity,  with  the  qualities  that 
most  resemble  them,  and  are  of  nearest  kindred  to 
them.1 

Thus  the  name  is  found,  in  modern  use,  in  at  least 
eight  different  senses  ;  and  in  either  one  of  them,  ac- 
cording to  the  connection,  it  may  be  quite  rightly  used, 

1  "It  is  well  understood  that,  in  social  parlance,  Christianity 
is  a  term  denuded  of  all  doctrinal  signification." — Saturday 
Ecvieiv. 


THE    NAME    CHRISTIAN.  121 

We  notice,  besides,  that  till  within  the  last  few- 
years  the  name  Christian  was  considered  rather  a 
privilege,  or  prerogative,  which  the  most  liberal  of 
religious  thinkers  earnestly  claimed  as  their  right, 
ami  whicl  :  theologians  were  jo 

mucli  inclined  to  define  by  sharp  boundaries,  and  to 
allow  or  withhold  on  purely  technical  grounds.  Quite 
recently,  the  tide  has  rather  turned  the  other  way. 
In  the  Increased  daring  of  modern  speculation,  Chris- 
tian thinkers,  more  strictly  so  called,  are  inclined  to 
desire  and  claim  the  alliance  of  any  who  do  Dot 
choose  to  take  openly  antichristian  ground  They 
incline  to  widen  the  definition,  to  level  the  bound- 
bo  accept  any  recruit  who  will  Bwell  their  ranks 
against  the  "  infidelity"  of  modern  On  the 

other  hand,  the  more  libera]  party  are  not  at  all 
anxious  about  their  exclusion  bom  that  name,  and 

many  of  them  distinctly  repudiate  and  disclaim  it, — 

some  as  neutral,  others  as  definitely  hostile  towards 
it.  To  them  it  is  a  sectarian  name,  meaning  either 
narrowness  or  falsehood  according  .is  you  look  at  it  ; 
and  so,  while  working  out  those  forms  of  reli 

truth  in  hett.r  harmony  with  the  widening  rani 
knowledge  and  thought,  they  reject  it  just  as  they 

would  any  other  name  of  sectarian  limitation,  or  any 
other  antiquated  error. 1 

For  myself,  I  am  not  quite  content  with  either  of 
the  definitions  I  have  given.  I  should  state  it  rather 
in  -nine  such  way  as  this:     In  religious  fellowship 

1  Mr.  Emerson,  who  was  understood  to  bars  declined  the  name 

when  it  was  taken  for  a  theological  badge,  returned  to  it,  with  much 
affection  and  veneration,  before  his  death. 


122  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

our  basis  of  union  is  not  intellectual,  or  theoreti- 
cal, but  emotional  and  moral,  having  to  do  not  with 
opinion,  but  with  character  and  conduct.  "When  I 
say  that  in  a  given  case  this  is  a  "  Christian "  basis 
of  union,  I  do  not  mean  to  be  understood  as  com- 
promising that  statement.  The  name  Christian  does 
not  rest,  as  I  hold  it,  on  any  theory  whatever  about 
the  nature  or  office  or  person  or  doctrine  of  Christ. 
It  rests  simply  on  the  fact  that  we  are  Christian  by 
habit  or  inheritance,  unless  we  deliberately  choose  to 
renounce  that  name  in  favor  of  some  other. 

Doubtless  the  name  should  not  be  asserted  or  re- 
tained, except  so  far  as  it  represents  the  fact.  From 
the  side  of  free-thought,  I  am  not  sure  that  it  always 
does ;  but  from  the  side  of  associated  religious  action 
it  (for  the  present)  very  accurately  does,  in  the  freest 
of  our  so-called  Christian  organizations.  As  distinctly 
as  I  realize  any  fact  in  human  history,  I  realize,  in 
acting  with  such  an  organization,  that  the  great  Chris- 
tian movement  has  not  spent  its  force ;  but  that  ill 
some  very  important  departments  of  thought,  still 
more  in  some  of  the  most  vital  and  practical  spheres 
of  motive  and  emotion,  its  current  still  bears  me 
along.  I  yield  to  its  pressure,  and  consciously  work 
with  it,  instead  of  standing  aside  to  criticise  and 
judge  it  independently. 

That  is  what  I  mean,  for  my  part,  by  calling 
myself  a  Christian.  When  I  assume  that  name,  I 
understand  myself  not  to  be  professing  an  article  of 
belief,  however  indefinite  and  vague,  but  to  be  stating 
an  historical  fact,  definite  and  precise.  Whatever 
Christian  form  or  symbol  I  accept,  I  understand  my- 


CHRISTIANITY   AND   FREE-THOUGHT. 

self  not  as  pledged  to  any  interpi  whatever, 

which  any  other  man  may  give  OX  may  have   [ 
of  such  form  or  symbol,  but  simply  as  claiming  my 
part  in  the  tradition  which  has  to  us,  ju 

our  natural  life  has,  —  not  by  otu  8,  but 

by  drift  of  circumstance;  and  I  am  entirely  fi 
interpret  or  u  I  will. 

I     in  well  conceive  that  an  interpretation  might 
upon  the  <  '1.  .1  or  name,  I 

overwhelming  assent  of  qui  which  would  make 

jonally  dishonest  and  morally  imj 
to  retain  that  iiamc.     But  at  present  not  only  I  do 

ee  it.  in  that  light,  but  it  is  niy  very  busi 
and  the  task  to  which  Qg  to  in:  "lib- 

eral Christianity"  I  am  m  commits 

i       with  all  its  terril 
and  with  all  its  pemicioufl 

name  that  means  too  much  for  the  higher  lite  of  men, 
whether  moral  or  spiritual,  tube  willingly  let  die. 

!  appears  to  me  that,  with  this  explanation  of  it, 
neither  the  name  Christian  nor  the  name  Unitarian  is 
inconsistent  with  the  most  absolute  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence of  thought,  —  understanding,  1  ,  that 
the  thought  is  in  harmony  with  the  main  aim  and 
purpose  of  what  we  call  the  Christian  life.  And  this 
I  understand,  thoug  cjuite  clear  in 
consciousness,  to  be  the  position  which  the  Unitarian 

has  definitely  come  to  take.     I  will  • 
any  oilier  illustrations  of  this  which  might 
but  will  only   say  that  when  Dr.  Bellows,  the  most 
honored  and  trusted  leader  of  the  body,  was  in  con- 
trol of  the  "  Christian  Examiner."  its  most  responsible 


124  A    SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

organ,  and  I  was  in  confidential  relations  with  him, 
he,  with  the  noble  generosity  of  nature  always  char- 
acteristic of  him,  distinctly  refused,  though  at  some 
personal  inconvenience  and  loss,  to  draw  any  narrower 
line  of  fellowship  than  what  I  have  attempted  to  lay 
down ;  and  as  distinctly  invited  and  urged  the  co- 
operation of  men  who,  he  knew,  dissented  radically 
from  opinions  which  to  him  were  sacred  and  funda- 
mental truth. 

The  liberalizing  of  theology  has  been  in  some  sense 
the  work  of  Unitarianism  from  the  first.  That  pro- 
cess includes  two  distinct  steps.  One  of  these  steps 
must  be  taken  by  the  aid  of  historical  criticism,  and 
the  other  by  the  aid  of  natural  science.  I  say  steps, 
though  each  of  them  is  a  process  made  up  of  innumer- 
able steps,  and  extending  over  many  generations.  I 
have  now  to  give  a  few  words  to  each  :  not  at  all  to 
trace  the  development  of  it  in  past  time,  but  to  show, 
very  briefly,  the  points  it  has  had  to  meet,  and  the 
position  it  has  come  to  take,  in  the  course  of  these 
last  few  years. 

As  to  historical  criticism,  few  knew  even  what  the 
phrase  meant,  not  many  years  before  the  time  I  am 
especially  dealing  with.  Theological  polemics  was  a 
battle  in  the  air.  It  was  kept  up  with  immense 
learning  on  both  sides,  but  with  the  sole  aim  on  each 
side  to  get  the  victory  over  the  other,  and  on  both,  to 
see  which  could  hit  the  hardest  blows.  Each  com- 
batant spoke  for  a  party,  —  evangelical,  unitarian, 
rationalistic,  — and  his  business  was  to  do  that  party 
the  best  service  and  its  adversaries  the  most  damage 
he  could. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   METHOD.  125 

This,  wo  know,  has  been  the  tone  of  theoloj 
rfare  lVuin  of  old.     On  the  titlepage  of  his  moat 

labored  And  B  of  work,  t: 

I)e  Wette's  "  Introduction  to  the   I  ut," 

The  I  :      Parker  put   tin-  defiant  motto,   s 

v.     This  mo"  Dgelj  ont  of  place  in  a   I 

of  pure  erudition  ;  but  it  ill.:  Aril  a  tem- 

per and  a  method  which  have  n^t  quite  passed  an 
That  is  the  th<  method  aa  formerly  and 

stood.      It    is    always   anticipate  ,:id  in   a 

chronic  attitude  of  fighting. 

scientific  method  at    It  minds 

own  business  of  building  up  what  it  can,  little  by 
little;  and,  aa  it   minds  it*?  business,  km 

tting,  cares  nothing,  about  any  opponents,  una 
j  or  real     Tin-  difference,  in  Bhort,  is  this:  that 
theology— at  \  it  was  understood  once  —  lays 

down  its  plan  of  thinking,  and  then  goes  on  with  its 
mode  of  interpretation  in  harmony  with  it; 
builds  together  it>  tact-,  bit  by  bit.  comparing, 
plaining,  investigating,   combining,   but   keeping 
dear  aa  may  be  from  all  theories  whatever,  ex 
they  grow  irresistibly  out  of  the  t. 

In  this  way  it  puts  together  its  construction,  —  not 
to  satisfy  a  preconceived  notion  of  what  must  be,  but 

:lv  aa  it  can  just  what  i-  or  a 
It  knows  that  our  knowledge  is  imperfect  and  fa 
mentary;  that  beyond  the  horizon  which  we  can  - 
are  boundless  regions  which  we   cannot   sec.      Its 
work  is  never  to  deny  what  may  be  beyond,  but,  by 
patient  exploring,  to  carry  the  horizon  farther  out; 
to  enlarge  the  boundaries  of  accurate  knowledge,  and 


126  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

within  those  boundaries  to  make  what  we  do  know 
more  orderly  and  precise.  In  this  its  method  is  just 
the  reverse  of  that  which  theology  has  more  com- 
monly followed.  Theology  pleads  as  an  advocate ; 
science  listens  to  all  the  evidence,  and  holds  the  bal- 
ance like  a  judge. 

In  saying  this,  I  do  not  mean  that  the  dogmatic 
method  belongs  to  the  orthodox  party  in  theology,  or 
the  scientific  to  its  opponents.  I  do  not  observe,  for 
example,  that  the  method  of  the  deists  or  rationalists 
is  at  all  more  scientific  than  that  it  attacked.  Hume's, 
for  example,  is  less  so  than  Lardner's,  and  Parker's 
less  than  Norton's.  The  difference  I  wish  to  point  out 
is  between  the  sober  constructive  temper  on  the  one 
side,  anxious  only  to  get  truth  uncolored  by  prejudice 
or  passion,  and  the  partisan  temper  on  the  other  side, 
chiefly  anxious  to  establish  a  foregone  conclusion. 

This  last  has  been  oftenest  shown,  no  doubt,  by 
theological  dogmatists,  but  often,  also,  by  anti-theo- 
logical dogmatists.  These  may  be,  and  often  are, 
generous,  large-hearted  men,  and  their  work  is  neces- 
sary and  noble.  Only,  they  are  what  they  are,  and 
their  work  is  what  it  is,  because  for  them  the  day  of 
science  is  not  yet.  Metaphysics,  destructive  dogma- 
tism, anti-theological  partisanship,  hot  passion  enlisted 
against  bigotry  and  intolerance,  are  necessary  to  clear 
the  ground.  They  are  the  indispensable  forerunner, 
but  they  are  no  more  what  we  call  science  than  the 
theories  they  oppose.  They  are  simply  a  protest  in 
the  name  of  intellectual  freedom.  The  zeal  and  the 
learning  they  bring  to  bear  give  weight  to  the  protest, 
and  do  an  infinite  service  for  those  who  are  yet  to 


NATURAL    AND    i::  127 

follow.  But  the  partisan  temper,  the  breeze  of  con- 
troversy, must  lull  before  we  can  have  a  scientific 
theology  in  the  proper  meaning  of  that  word 

In  some  :  the  present  is  mnch  more  I  , 

able  for  this  than  the  time  that  went  The 

controversial   tern]  and  the 

temper  has  had  quite  a  new  training  in  tl 
riona  of  these  latter  years.  It  would  not  I 
to  say  that  interest  has  Lessened  in  the  fundamental 

•us  of  religious  thought     It  would 
corref  y  that  a  and  more  radical 

haps  more  anxious,  del  ing  on  as  to  the  reli- 

gious bearings  of  natural  science  as  it  is  now  coming 
to  be  understood.     Darwin,  S]  .  .  mlall.  Huxley, 

are  names  of  much  more  immediate  moment  to  the 
theological  world  than  the  nan.  -  :hleierma 

Strauss,   Baur,  and  Parker.     In  the   field  of  debate 
n<»w  open,  the  place  of  honor  is  held,  not  by  the 
advocates  of  this  or  that  opinion,  but  by  those  who, 
patiently,  learnedly,  and  candidly  are  doing  then 
to  briB  ;it  to  bear  upon  the 

: 

.,  what  do  we  moan  by  theolog 
and  how  do  its  method  and  aim  differ  from  those  of 
physical  science  '.    For  example,  how  (\<n->  a  scientific 
theology  differ  from  a  scientific  physiolo 

The  method  of  natural  science   is  well  iin 
which  is  the  observation  and  comparison  of  tacts  ;  and 

its  aim,  which  is  to  ascertain  the  "laws  of  similitude 
and  succession"  of  those  facts.    Theories  of  the  oi 
of  life,  or  the  general  problem  of  Being,  it  dismisses 
as  belonging  altogether  to  the  sphere  of  the  L  nknow- 


128  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

able,  or  at  least  as  coming  under  the  province  not  of 
physics  but  of  metaphysics. 

A  scientific  theology  has,  to  begin  with,  precisely 
the  same  method  and  aim :  it  differs  only  in  the  data 
it  assumes,  and  the  class  of  facts  with  which  it  has 
to  deal.  It  has  (for  example)  nothing  to  do  with 
cosmological  theories,  evolutionary  or  other,  though 
many  persons  seem  to  suppose  so.  These,  however 
fascinating  or  instructive,  belong  to  the  field  of  physi- 
cal or  else  metaphysical  speculation.  The  facts  it 
has  to  do  with  directly  are  these  :  facts  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  and  facts  of  religious  history.  The 
laws  it  has  to  investigate  are  the  laws  of  life  as  they 
bear  on  character  and  conduct.  The  phenomena  it 
explores  are  distinctively  religious  phenomena;  that 
is,  ethical  or  emotional.  These  it  is  the  business  of 
a  scientific  theology  to  interpret  with  as  keen  an  eye 
to  fact,  as  physiology  in  interpreting  the  functions 
of  any  organ  or  tissue.  Whether  on  the  narrowest 
scale  in  the  individual  life,  or  more  broadly  in  the 
interpretation  of  sacred  literature,  or  on  the  largest 
scale  in  the  great  movements  of  human  history,  it  is 
the  first  business  of  a  scientific  theology  to  interpret 
those  facts,  or  alleged  facts,  of  human  life  which  are 
remotest  from  the  range  of  physical  necessity,  most 
closely  and  essentially  included  in  the  field  of  char- 
acter and  will. 

Of  course,  there  is  a  province  of  pure  learning  which 
belongs  especially  to  the  theological  domain.  This 
includes  the  vast  accumulated  erudition  in  the  way 
of  literary  criticism,  exegesis,  dogmatics,  historical 
criticism,  and  a  great  proportion  of  what  is  commonly 


IAIN    OF   THE   SU1  vl..  129 

elong  to  ecch  I  history. 

ttie.se  topi  Le8iology  and  textual  criticism,  for 

example  —  may  1  rid  to  constitute  special  or 

ancillary  -  in  bhemselv< 

>f  the  religious  life  which 
ilationa  with  the  infinite,  the  unseen, 
tin-  incomprehensible;  a  view  which   in  the 
language  of  religi  I  »  kn<>v. '. 

but  to  faith.     But  for  the  |  md  for  tl 

lion,  it  will  be  convenient  to  limit  vince 

of  scientific  tfa  to  the  intei ; 

facts  of  the 
religi'  and  fact  gioug  nisi 

very  come 

upon  a  wide  field  of  disputed  I    I — -the  boh 
supernatural    On  the  I  principles  of  natural 

••,  what  are  we  to  do  with  these  1  Religious 
history  is  too  full  of  them  to  let  us  pass  them  by. 
Our   methods  of  historical    criticism  ai  ied  to 

their  Bharpest  test  in  dealing  with  them      We  i  annot 
very  well  begin  by  assuming  that  our  only  wit:. 
in  a  given  matter  are  retailing  pure  falsehood!  d< 

"  deceived    The  mere  strangeness  of  a  phenom- 
enon is  no  logical  ground  for  denying  it.     Mil 
meet  us  on  the  threshold  of  our  inquiry  ;  and  one 
of  our  tii  must  be  iriy  before  our 

minds  as  we  can  the  princi]  dealing  with  them 

intelligently. 

As  this  is  quite  the  most  perplexed  and  difficult 
part  of  our  whole  inquiry,  we  must  give  it  a  some- 
what patient  and  deliberate  attention.  Let  us  begin 
by  noticing  one  or  two  contrasts  that  follow  from  the 


130  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

difference  in  the  subject-matter  between  theology  and 
science,  as  that  term  is  commonly  applied. 

Science  assumes  as  its  postulate  or  ideal  (which  it 
has  a  perfect  right  to  do),  that  every  group  of  facts 
supposably  may  be,  and  in  time  probably  will  be, 
reduced  within  the  domain  of  natural  law,  —  that  is, 
within  that  orderly  succession  of  events  whose  ante- 
cedents or  successions  we  can  intelligently  follow,  and 
at  length  predict ;  and  its  objective  point  will  be  to 
reduce  as  many  of  them  as  it  can.  Theology  assumes 
as  its  postulate  or  ideal,  that  everything  at  bottom 
proceeds  from  living,  intelligent,  personal  force,  and 
sees  in  any  given  event  an  exhibition  of  that  force. 
It  deals,  in  short,  with  Persons,  as  the  other  deals 
with  Things. 

Science  has  the  advantage  of  showing  how  a  great 
multitude  of  facts,  once  thought  to  be  ultimate  (that 
is  to  say,  super-natural),  have  been  reduced  to  regular 
order  and  succession,  grouped  and  classified,  so  that 
the  course  of  them  can  be  predicted  or  intelligently 
controlled :  storms  and  eclipses,  for  example,  on  one 
side,  and  mental  maladies  on  the  other,  neither  of 
which  now  seem  to  us  supernatural  in  origin  or  sub- 
ject to  miraculous  control.  Theology  has  the  advan- 
tage, as  soon  as  we  come  to  deal  with  the  motives  and 
acts  of  intelligent  beings,  and  with  all  the  higher 
manifestations  of  life,  that  its  theories  come  closer  to 
our  notion  of  originating  force. 

Science,  again,  does  not  pretend  to  know  anything 
about  the  origin  of  existing  things ;  and,  if  we  at- 
tempt to  account  for  that  at  all,  an  intelligent  Will 
(as  Comte  said)  is  at  least  as  rational  and  easy  a  way 


LAW    AND    WILL.  131 

as  any  other.     Neither  has  science  ever  succeeded  in 
idling  it  to  the  common  men. 

that  our  voluntary  me  within  the  uniform  and 

necessary  sequence  of  natural  law:  such  woi 
virtue  and  crime,  right  ami  wrong  —  belonging  . 
culiarto  the  theological  domain— always  ne  the 

osibility  and  moral  freedom. 
In  short,  we  have  the  ■•  and 

Will,  of  i.  ami  Liberty,  «-t  natural  event  and 

human  chara  I 

Lutely  irreducible  either  of  them  to  the  other 
trictly,  a  free  ad  is  just  as  much  amir.. 

>n  of  a  world  ;  an  act, — 

that    is,  an    act    of  intelligent   will,   such    as   we   are 
LOUS    "I     at    any    moment,  —  :  no    other 

miracle.1 

Now  just  how  far    the    province  of  will,  human   Of 

divine,  extends  in  the  6eld  of  action  or  history,  it  is 
m»t    for  any  man   to   dogmatize       V  would 

admit  that  an  intelligent  act  was  required, at  any  rate, 
to  start  the  human  race  <>n  it-  course,  and  to  appoint 
the   l.aw  which  has  guided  it-  evolution.     To  some 

of  us  —  and    perhaps   more   and   more,   the   moi 
reflect  upon   it  —  it   will  a]. pear  not   unlikely  that  a 
living  influence,  a  pressure   bo  I  ik]  like  that  of 

the  atmosphere,  is  felt  in  human  a  flairs,  acting  < 
where  and  always,  but  especially  through  mind-  of 

certain   peculiar  capacities    ami  gifts;  and    that   this 

influence  (which  must  be  allowed  for  jus!  allow 

for  the    pressure   of  the   atmosphere  m   median; 

1  The  point  is  farther  developed  in  Dr.  BuahnelTl  "  Nature  and 

the  Supernatural. " 


132  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

from  a  sphere  outside  the  will,  or  the  conscious  in- 
telligence of  men.  It  is  not  a  thing  to  dogmatize 
about ;  and  its  laws,  supposing  it  to  work  by  law,  do 
not  seem  very  likely  to  come  within  the  range  of  our 
mental  science.  Still,  in  speaking  of  it,  we  should 
bear  in  mind  that  we  are  speaking  of  nothing  contra- 
natural  or  abnormal,  but  of  what  comes  into  the  same 
order  of  fact  as  the  evolution  of  a  planet  or  the  sim- 
plest act  of  volition. 

Here,  then,  is  the  point  to  which  we  are  led.  All 
that  we  call  miraculous  and  supernatural,  the  whole 
province  of  revelation  and  inspiration,  lies  (as  all  his- 
tory does)  in  this  field,  which  belongs  alike  to  science 
and  to  theology :  to  one  as  the  exponent  of  Law,  and 
to  the  other  as  the  asserter  of  Will.  The  question 
between  them  is  simply  how  far  the  province  of  will, 
or  personal  force,  can  enter  upon  and  control  the 
domain  of  law,  or  natural  sequence.  If  we  say  never 
and  not  at  all,  we  assert  a  mere  dogmatic  fatalism, 
which  is  not  only  incapable  of  proof,  but  is  in  violent 
contradiction  to  our  moral  consciousness.  If  we  say 
it  may  enter,  ever  so  little  way,  by  the  original  act  of 
the  Creator,  or  by  the  free  lifting  of  a  hand,  then  we 
waive  all  dogmatic  a  priori  denial  of  the  possibility 
of  miracle  and  revelation  ; l  and  it  only  remains  to  us 
to  inquire,  as  accurately  as  we  can,  what  is  the  real 
fact  covered  by  those  words. 

But  that  is  not  going  to  prove,  as  some  theologians 
have  imagined,  a  short  and  easy  process.  It  will  not 
do  to  take  a  single  style  of  mental  illumination,  and 

1  Obviously  a  different  thing  from  the  legitimate  logical  pre- 
sumption against  marvels. 


Mil;      I  133 

jle  group  of  acts,  appearing  at  one  given  ] 
of  history,  and  say  that  all  revelation  and  mini 
included  here.      Stil]   less   will  it  do   to    accept  oil- 
hand  one  class  or  school   of    •  to    these 
paiiirul.tr  facts,  and  rule  nut  off-hand  all  other  evi- 
dence as  to  similar  facta  appearing  at  other  times 
and  in  other  waya    The  records  of  history  are  full  of 
alleged   miracles,  oracles,  wonders,  presumed  t"  be 
Bnpernatural.     [f  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  n 
make  a  class  entirely  by  themselves,  and  an 

alone    in  all    tin*,   worl  1 

latlon    and    miracle    (which,   with    many,  is   the    only 

point  at  issue  ,  that  fact  itself  cannot  I  Lished 

without  exhaustive  criticism  and  comparison,  and  a 
long  and  intricate  pn  itudy,  which  is  hardly 

more  than  begun. 

( irant  that  in  thi  ttds  then 

characteristicfl  quite  unique,  giving  them  a  claim  to 
he  valued  and  studied  quite  peculiar  to  them,  and 
shared  by  no  other,  — and  there  is  a  good  deal  in 

them  to  justify  that  claim,  —  still  this  by  no  means 
dls  tin-  duty,  in  the  lace  of  the  immense  learn- 
ing and  argument  arrayed  against  u.  of  establishing 
it  patiently  and  good  temperedly,  by  fair  reasoning; 
not  asserting  it  violently,  on  peril  of  denunciation  or 
worse,  or  «■■.  aming  it  in  advance  to  be  defended 

afterwards.     Suppose  tbosi  to  be  intrinsically 

and  exceptionally  divine,  it  will  be  some  generations 
yet  before  that  fact  can  be  sufficiently  establish 
serve  for  a  valid  theory  of  sacred  history.     The  old 
proofs  of  it  served  for  a  time,  but  the  whole  process 
of  proof  has  now  to  abide  a  different  class  of  tests. 


134  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

Two  needless  difficulties  have  been  introduced  here 
by  modern  defenders  of  miracles. 

The  first  is  the  view  which  sees  in  them  manifes- 
tations, or  invasions,  of  a  higher  realm  of  Law,  over- 
riding and  controlling  those  lower  ranges  of  law  with 
which  we  are  familiar.  This  needless  concession  to 
the  terminology  of  science  is  dispensed  with,  by  tak- 
ing the  simpler  definition  of  a  miracle,  as  an  act  of 
Will  under  conditions  exceptional  and  imperfectly 
understood,  particularly  when  those  conditions  have 
to  do  with  man's  nervous  or  psychical  organization. 
The  conditions,  here  as  elsewhere,  are  defined  by  law  ; 
but  the  act  of  will  is  in  its  nature  (so  far  as  it  reaches) 
the  overruling  of  law.  What  is  Law,  after  all,  ex- 
cept an  observed  sequence  of  phenomena  ?  If  there 
is  any  force  behind  it,  that  is  quite  as  likely  to  be 
intelligent  and  free  as  otherwise. 

The  other  difficulty  is  the  assumption,  often  si- 
lently made,  that  the  exception  which  makes  the 
miracle  is  to  be  allowed  in  a  single  class  of  miracles 
only,  —  those  of  the  Bible,  which  are  involved  in  a 
particular  theological  scheme.  Thus  the  hardest  and 
most  disputed  point  in  the  problem  is  put  in  front, 
to  be  met  first.  It  is  evident,  on  the  contrary,  that 
the  true  method  wTould  be  to  take  the  easiest  and 
nearest  first,  —  to  decide,  if  possible,  on  the  alleged 
miracles  of  our  own  time  ;  to  examine  testimony  from 
other  parts  of  the  historical  field ;  and  thus  to  secure 
in  advance  the  canons  of  evidence  by  which  the 
miracles  of  Scripture  may  be  brought  under  scientific 
tests. 

I  wTill  not  speak  here  of  the  great  field   that  is 


TESTIMONY   TO   MIRA<  U  135 

opened  by  the  study  of  comparative  religions,  but  only 
of  what  belongs  directly  to  the  history  and  develop- 
ment of  Christianity  itself.  h>  earliest  defenders 
(as  Justin)  admitted  the  realit . 

miracles,  which  they  ascribed  to  evil  daemons,  while 
they  laid  no  claim  to  supernatural  powers  of  their 
own.     Its  later  a<i  —  conspicuously  Augustine 

and  Gregory  of  Tours  —  testify  in  the  i 
and  explicit  way  to  miracles  of  healing  and  of  raising 
from  th«'  dead,  in  their  own  exp  and  by  powers 

directly  conferred  on  Christian  believers.    The  1 
mony  of  these  dignified  and  important  eye-wito 
is  very  different  from  the  innumerable  miraculous 
legends  that  .-warm  in  al  chronicles  and 

of  the   saints. 

Catholic  believers,  however  have  always  asserted 
thai  their  Church  retained  ler-working] 

Some  years  ago,  when  living  in  Washington,  I 
informed  in  greal  detail  of  a  church  miracle  of  heal- 
ing which  had  been  wrought  there  very  recently,  with 

all    formality   and    publicity.       Sometimes    tales   like 

vanish  when  you  come  near  them;  sometimes 
they  do  not  And  no  evidence  in  history  appears  to 
be  plainer,  more  explicit,  or  more  respectable,  than 

what  comes  to  us  daily  n{  works  of  healing,  or  the 
like,  quite  outside  any  known  scientific  method,  which 
can  be  ascribed  only  to  the  exertion  of  the  will  under 

special  conditions:  that  is,  they  come  under  any  defi- 
nition of  miracle  which  can  be  intelligently  framed. 
All  these   make  part  of   the  held  open  to  scientific 

exploration. 

I  do  not  bring  up  these  illustrations  as   an  argu- 


136  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

ment  bearing  one  way  or  the  other  on  the  reality  of 
miraculous  phenomena.  Personally,  I  have  no  theo- 
retical objection  whatever  to  what  are  commonly 
called  miracles,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  I  can  un- 
derstand that  term,  —  that  is,  as  acts  of  will,  whether 
human  or  divine,  under  conditions  which  have  not 
yet  been,  and  perhaps  never  will  be,  reduced  within 
our  science.  What  I  do  object  to  is  the  logical  in- 
consistency of  applying  canons  of  evidence  to  one  set 
of  facts,  which  we  refuse  at  the  same  time  to  apply 
to  another  set  of  facts. 

I  do  not  say,  either,  that  all  those  facts  must  stand 
or  fall  together.  They  are  found  in  great  variety,  and 
supported  by  widely  different  degrees  of  proof.  I  do 
not  even  deny  that  the  final  result  of  the  most  skil- 
ful and  fair  investigation  may  be  to  leave  the  mira- 
cles of  the  Bible  in  their  place  of  honor,  the  sole  and 
only  facts  of  that  order  which  history  will  allow  per- 
manently to  stand.  I  only  say  that  the  preliminary 
studies  have  not  yet  been  undertaken,  —  at  least,  not 
carried  by  any  means  far  enough,  —  to  justify  that  as 
the  final  verdict.  Men  of  science  have  been  too  radi- 
cally hostile  to  the  very  idea  of  miracle,  or  in  fact  of 
any  free-agency  at  all;  while  theologians  have  been 
too  tenaciously  bent  on  proving  or  disproving  the 
authenticity  of  particular  books,  to  allow  the  real 
question  to  come  before  the  court  of  reason. 

For  the  present,  therefore,  what  we  are  entitled  to 
demand  is  this :  that  the  Biblical  record,  after  due 
process  of  literary  criticism,  shall  be  judged  exactly 
as  we  judge  other  records,  ancient  or  modern,  of  al- 
leged contemporary  fact.     More  than  this  the  friends 


CANONS   OF   EVIDENCE.  137 

of  science  have  no  right  to  demand;  less  than  this 
they  cannot  be  asked  or  expected  to  a© 

I  say  nothing  of  what  it  may  be  when  the  true 
conditions  of  historical  criticism  are  better  under* 
stood.    But  provisionally,  and  for  the  pn  seem 

to  be  justified  in  accepting  a  Scripture  miracle  as  true, 
if  the  same  or  a  corresponding  d<  I   evidence 

would  convince  as  of  the  same  thing  happening  in 
to-day  or  in  America  a  hundred  y<  >;  and 

we  are  not  justified  in  ting  it  if  the  sam< 

corresponding  would  not  convince 

us  of  the  same  thing  happening  in  day  or  in 

America  a  hundred  years  ago.     And  at  all  events  we 
need,  to  establish  our  canons  of  evidence  or  our  I 
credibility,  some  well  certified  and  generally  ac 
judgment  of  scientific  men,  after  sufficient  inv< 
tion,  of  the  alleged  "miracles"  of  our  own  day.     No 
other  judgment   appears  I  ther  rational,  ade- 

quate, Or  candid. 

Accepting  this  as  a  general  criterion,  we  shall  not, 

probahly.  be  over  hasty  or  confident  in  applying  it  to 

the  record  of  particular  facts.     It',  however!  we  may 

by  the  turn  given  to  modern  o  ion  of 

such   thing8,  it  would   appear  that    the, 

class  of  s.ripturc  miracles,  or  what  aerally  re- 

garded as  Buch,  —  chiefly  the  healing  of  nervous  and 

mental  disorders,  —  which  we  may  accept  with  little 
hesitation,  Bubject,  ol  course,  to  the  criticism  of  an  im- 
proved physiology.  There  are  ethers  —  chiefly  those 
concerning  certain  natural  phenomena  —  which  we 

should  almost  certainly  reject  as  facts,  without  any 
hesitation  at  all.     Some  of  them  may  be  poetry,  like 


138  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

that  of  Joshua  and  the  sun ;  some  allegory  or  myth, 
like  that  of  Jonah  and  the  whale,  the  ascension  of 
Elijah,  or  the  children  in  the  fiery  furnace  ;  some  — 
like  the  feeding  of  the  multitudes,  stilling  the  tem- 
pest, walking  on  the  waves,  or  blasting  the  fig-tree  — 
a  natural  enough  misunderstanding  of  the  real  fact 
(whatever  that  may  have  been),  or  perhaps  a  parable 
misconceived.  Such  expositions  lie  mostly  in  the 
region  of  pure  hypothesis. 

There  are  others  which  have  taken  a  deeper  hold 
on  the  religious  imagination,  and  which  have  become, 
so  to  speak,  articles  of  religious  faith  in  themselves. 
As  to  these,  the  judgment  of  candid  and  honest  minds 
is  likely  to  be  greatly  in  suspense,  and  painfully. 
That  we  cannot  help.  We  wish  to  see,  if  we  are 
candid  and  honest,  just  where  our  principles  of  belief 
are  likely  to  lead  us. 

Of  such  events  the  typical  one,  and  beyond  com- 
parison the  most  momentous,  is  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus.  To  this  our  ordinary  canons  do  not  quite 
apply :  first,  because  absolute  belief  in  it,  by  those 
who  claimed  to  be  eye-witnesses,  was  the  mainspring 
of  a  great  and  definite  movement  in  human  history ; 
and  second,  because  belief  in  it  not  only  qualifies 
men's  view  of  the  course  of  events  in  general  (as  all 
miracle  does),  but  is  apt  to  determine  their  whole 
view  of  human  life  and  destiny.  Not  only  as  the 
demonstration  of  a  life  to  come,  but  as  symbol  and 
proof  of  the  victory  of  good  over  evil,  the  place 
which  it  holds  in  the  religious  mind  is  entirely 
unique.  Criticism  is  therefore  bound  to  approach  it 
more  deliberately,  more  anxiously,  more  tenderly,  than 


THE    RESURRECTION*    OF   JK 

it  approaches  any  other  which  it  is  really  seek 
understand. 

We  Imit,  at  the  out-  whelming 

:       imption  which  the  modern  mind  finds  against 
the  literal  interpretation  of  the  narrative.     It  is  prob- 
ably not  too  much  to  say  that  do  i  I  mind  — 
that  is,  no  mind  trained  in  modern  methods - 
believes  that  a  body  of  flesh  and  blood  literally 
from  the  grave,  and  in  plain  sight  of  men  i 
the  clouds,  —  tin-  view  of  it  which  n  ly  be- 
i  maintained  with  great  intrepidity.    Tl. 
long  with  the  dogma  oft 
of  the  body,  which  it  was  held  to  ; 

The  alternative  which  foi 
ern  mind  is  plain :  either  I  teal  death,  or 

was  do  d  .1  revival  of  the  dead 
evidence  will  outweigh  the  vast  improbability.     B  il 
that  alternative  only  brings  as  to  the  threshold  of  the 
interpretation  It  only  pnl  I  ion  in 

another  form  :   Is  it  p  r  a  human  soul, 

death,  to  manifest  its  presence  in  a  way  of  which  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus  is  an  example  and  a  type  I  And 
to  this  question  there  i  d  affirmative  an-- 

giving  as  many  phases  of  belief,- — Done  of  them  dis- 
proved, and  Borne  of  them,  it  may  be,  not  incapable 
of  future  proof. 

A    valid  an-  in,  would  uriv.- —  or  for  it  we 

should  need  —  a  far  better  knowledge  than  we  have 
now  of  the  exact  relation  between  this  and  what,  for 
want  of  better  knowledge,  we  call  the  unseen  world. 
Granting  only  that  such  a  realm  of  conscious  life  ex- 
ists, it  would  be  absurd  to  deny  that  it  could  be  made 


140  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

known  to  us ;  and  there  would  remain  no  difficulty 
either  in  the  recorded  appearances  of  Jesus,  or  in 
countless  other  manifestations  of  spirits  that  have 
passed  into  it  before  us.  It  becomes  simply  a  ques- 
tion of  the  larger  possibilities  and  destinies  of  human 
nature. 

It  is  perfectly  easy  to  see  what  the  first  disciples 
understood  by  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and  in  what 
sense  they  believed  in  it.  Paul,  to  be  sure,  the 
earliest  Christian  writer,  speaks  of  it  very  vaguely, 
except  as  to  the  point  of  its  reality,  which  he  insists 
on  in  every  possible  way,  as  the  very  foundation  of 
Christian  faith.  This  reality,  to  his  mind,  is  the 
glorified  life  in  heaven  of  the  living  and  exalted 
Messiah,  who,  in  his  new  official  station,  is  the  direct 
source  of  inspiration  and  strength  to  his  disciples. 
The  particular  event  and  way  of  "  the  resurrection 
from  the  dead "  he  says  nothing  about,  except  to 
insist  that  it  is  not  a  form  of  flesh  and  blood,  but  a 
"  spiritual  body,"  that  dwells  in  the  after-life. 

But  the  next  generation  have  left  us  no  room 
whatever  to  doubt  of  their  meaning.  They  have 
explained  and  argued,  in  the  most  explicit  terms, 
that  it  was  a  body  of  flesh  and  blood  which  rose  from 
the  grave.  It  was  proved  to  be  so  by  the  act  of 
eating  and  drinking;  it  was  shown  by  wounds  and 
scars  to  be  the  same  that  was  actually  mangled 
upon  the  cross ;  and  it  was  visibly  taken  up  in  plain 
daylight  into  the  sky.  It  is  saying  nothing  what- 
ever to  criticise  or  condemn  that  belief,  to  say  that 
it  has  passed  wholly  out  of  the  educated  mind  of 
the   present   day,   along  with   the  kindred  and  de- 


EXPOSITIONS   OF   THK    UBUlttCTION.  141 

pendent  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  our  own 
bodies. 

Of  modern  ezponti  •    I   by   Unitarians, 

may  be  mentioned  the  following:  — 

Dr.  Furnesa  leti  aside  the  whole  accompaniment 
of  angelic  visions,  an  1  re]  using 

himself  as  if  from  a  deep  Bleep,  —  manifestly  imply- 
ing that  there  had  been  no  death  in  the  ordinary 
or  physiological  sense. 

Mr.    Edmund   II  -a  mind  rare  and  admi- 

rable, in  whom  piety  and  imagination  were  matched 

by  equal  literary   vigor  and  charm  —  held  that  the 

risen  bodyofJesus  booami  .  during  forty 

days,  attenuated,  spiritual:.  i  attaining 

the  condition  of  wh al  lied  the  "resurrection 

body,"  in  which  condition  it  was  withdrawn  from 
human  sight1 
James  Freeman  Clarke  regards  the  resurrection  of 
as  "an  example  of  a  universal  law."  and  his 
visible  appearances  as  illustrating  the  conditions 
under  which  the  departed  may  manifest  themselves 
in  a  "spiritual  body,"  —  his  real  body  having  been 
removed  by  priests  or  soldiers.2  We  have  here,  ap- 
parently, the  same  phenomenon  as  in  the  "  materialis- 
ations "  of  modern  Spiritism;  >ince  "a  universal  law" 
cannot,  of  course,  be  interred  from  disputed 

example. 

Pi  sident  Walker  —  one  of  the  m  adid, 

and  honored  of  Unitarian  thinkers  —  held,  more 
simply,  that  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  was  really  the 

1  Pongleama  of  Immortality. 

a  Orthodoxy,  its  Truths  and  Errors,  p.  S3. 


142  A  SCIENTIFIC  THEOLOGY. 

strong  personal  impression  or  conviction  of  his  living 
presence,  produced  on  the  minds  of  his  disciples  by 
his  own  spiritual  contact  and  influence  while  in  the 
unseen  world,  which  they  interpreted  as  a  visible 
appearance.  To  him  the  Ascension  was  decisive 
against  a  material  resurrection. 

A  view  to  which  many  of  the  most  thoughtful  and 
intelligent  appear  to  incline  —  most  strikingly  set 
forth  by  the  author  of  "  Philochristus  "  —  is,  that  the 
imagination  and  faith  of  the  disciples  created  out- 
right those  visions  or  appearings  of  their  risen  Lord 
which  afterwards  took  shape  in  the  gospel  narratives, 
or  in  later  legends,  —  hard  to  reconcile  with  one  an- 
other, but  easy  to  reconcile  by  that  vivid  and  creative 
fancy,  inspired  by  revering  affection,  and  an  absolute 
hope  of  his  future  return  in  celestial  glory. 

These  are  interpretations  suggested  by  believing, 
serious,  religious  minds.  Mere  scientific  criticism, 
neutral  or  hostile,  goes  much  further,  so  as  to  make 
the  whole  account  sheer  fabrication,  imposture,  myth, 
or  hallucination. 

I  have  thus  indicated  what  appears  to  me  the  true 
attitude  of  scientific  thought  towards  the  most  dis- 
puted and  difficult  questions  of  theology,  in  which  I 
do  not  include  such  properly  philosophical  or  meta- 
physical questions  as  the  being  or  attributes  of  God, 
freedom  of  the  will,  and  the  natural  argument  for 
immortality.  For  the  profoundest  thought  on  these 
questions  of  the  higher  philosophy,  from  the  Uni- 
tarian point  of  view,  I  may  refer  to  Dr.  Hedge's 
u  Reason  in  Religion,"  and  "  Ways  of  the  Spirit,"  or 


THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT.  143 

to  tlit'  superb  and  eloquent  exposition  that  has  been 
given    of    these   and    similar   topics    by    Mr.    J 
M  irtineau 

I  have    been   drawn   into   making  this   di 
more  than  I  meant,  a  statement  ol  J  opinion 

as  far  as  it  goes;  because  that  seems  fairer  than  a 
method  purely  impersonal  and  non-committal  It 
appears  to  me  that  the  chief  Lesson  we  have  to  Learn 

.        and  patience      1 1 
dogmatism  is  the  demand  of  the  impatient 
and  the  source  of  never-ending,  bitter,  fruit] 
troversy.     What  I  have  called  a  "scientific"  method 
of  dealing  with   the  subject   will  tolerate  no  such 
thing.     The  Long  experience  of  physical  investigation, 
leading  to  the  enormous  enlargement  of  our  positive 
knowledge  and  power,  teaches  always  this  one  In 
—  intellectual  humility. 

-    ence  forbids  partisanship  and  passion:  it 
not  fori. id  an  intense,  deep,  persona]  interest  in  the 

wide  held  it  exploit  I        world  of  man  —  of  emotion, 

character,  and  act  opened  tons  in  Christian  history 

and  in  the  study  of  the  human  soul  —  is  far  nearer  to 
our  thought,  and  far  more  interesting,  than  the  splen- 
did realm  of  outward  phenomena  taught  in  our  cos- 
mology and  our  physics.      Let  it  !*■  studied  with  equal 

patience,  reverence,  humility,  with  equal  loyalty  to 
the  revelation  of  simple  tact,  and  its  fruit  will  not  l>e 
less  precious  or  abundant 

Again  :  Science  involves  Criticism  ;  and  the  results 

of  criticism  are  often,  for  the  time  at  least,  negative, 

not  positive.     But  while  there  is  many  a  thing  which 

in   only  have  left  behind  with  reluctance  and 


144  A   SCIENTIFIC   THEOLOGY. 

pain,  yet  as  one  is  intellectually  the  "  heir  of  all  the 
ages,"  so  the  later  he  inherits,  the  richer  his  inheri- 
tance. The  scientific  spirit  is  likely  to  prove  braver, 
manlier,  honester,  than  the  ecclesiastical  spirit,  even 
if  less  serious  and  tender ;  and  the  tendency  to  a 
certain  mental  timidity,  half-heartedness,  and  com- 
promise can  never  again,  I  should  think,  be  quite  as 
strong  as  some  of  us  have  felt  it  in  the  past. 

There  is  always  a  temptation  to  try  our  hand  at 
some  ideal  theory  of  reconciliation  and  mental  har- 
mony among  the  widely  diverse  elements  of  our  ex- 
perience. But  history  makes  very  light  of  all  such 
ideal  theories.  We  are  not  responsible  for  the  begin- 
ning of  things,  or  for  the  end  of  things ;  though  by  a 
sort  of  generous  illusion  we  are  apt  to  feel  so.  For 
us,  the  only  answer  of  any  value  to  any  of  the  great 
questions  respecting  God,  Life,  Destiny,  is  the  answer 
we  find  —  very  slowly  and  late  in  life  perhaps  —  by 
doing  our  own  best  work  in  our  own  best  way ;  and 
in  keeping  mind  and  heart  always  open  to  the  whisper 
of  the  Spirit  of  all  Truth.  And  that  is,  after  all,  the 
best  contribution  we  can  make  to  the  larger  result, — 
perhaps  the  only  one. 


VII. 
Tin:   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

THAT   very   brilliant  and   striking   ln.uk.      I". 
II    :..  .Miliar  the  phi  :husi- 

asm  of  humanity,"  to  describe  the  spirit  which,  mora 

than  anything  i 

was  conceived  in  the  minds  iplea 

This  may  be  justified,  ; 
which  ;:.■   v  ..   i.      ment  lays  on  the  purely  human 
qualities  of  justice,  charity,  and  compassion,  above 
all  tradition,  form,  or  doctrine.    And  the] 
t i in**  when  the  l  Jhurch  a  the  heav- 

iks  In  the  preservin  instructing  of 

by  in  a  Long  period  of  violence  and 
That  was.  however,  in  the  nam  not  man,  and 

by  the  offices  of  a  priest,  not  by  appealing  broadly  to 
the  human  reason  ;  still  less  by  the  intelligent  study 
of  the  causes  that  make  for  human  welfare  and  virtue 
gainst  misery  and  crime. 

Thus  the  p]  enthusiasm  of  humanity  "was 

never  properly  characteristic  of  the  Chi  hurch 

as  such;  and  it  never  had  a  distinct  meaning  in  any- 
body's mind  till  within  the  last  hundred  years.  It 
really  belongs  not  to  the  religion  of  the  past,  but  to 
the  religion  of  the  future.  And  when  we  speak  of 
any  connection  it  may  have  with  the  liberal  move- 

10 


146  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

merit  in  theology*  we  speak  of  the  most  important 
thing  of  all,  in  which  that  may  have  any  hold  upon, 
or  any  service  of  preparation  for,  or  any  hope  in,  that 
better  life  for  man  at  which  Eeligion  aims. 

Here  let  me  recall  a  single  step  of  the  ground  over 
which  we  have  already  passed.  Unitarianism,  as  it 
was  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  had  in  it  two  ele- 
ments :  the  element  of  Eeason,  in  which  it  was  an 
outgrowth  of  the  realistic  school  of  Locke ;  and  the 
element  of  Justice,  in  which  it  was  allied  with  the 
revolutionary  spirit  and  the  political  radicalism  of  a 
hundred  years  ago. 

In  its  later  history  in  this  country  these  two  ele- 
ments have  continually  reappeared  side  by  side. 
They  have  determined,  on  the  one  hand,  the  movement 
of  free-thought  against  the  old  theology,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  they  have  defined  the  issues  of  later  con- 
troversy. Let  us  see  to  what  point  they  have  already 
brought  us. 

It  may  be  fairly  said  that  reason  is  now  in  the  as- 
cendant in  the  field  of  theology.  The  old  questions 
of  history,  criticism,  and  dogma  are,  it  is  true,  far 
enough  from  being  settled  ;  but  at  least  they  have  all 
been  brought  under  a  scientific  method  of  inquiry, 
which  (so  far  as  we  can  see)  is  their  final  stage.  But 
thought  is,  at  best,  an  inconsiderable  part  of  the 
domain  of  life.  If  the  next  great  development  of 
religion  is  to  be  in  the  direction  of  intelligent  service 
of  humanity,  —  which,  with  all  generous  minds,  is  to 
take  the  place  of  ritual  and  dogma,  —  our  most  im- 
portant study  must  be  the  antecedents,  principles,  and 
conditions  of  that  service. 


THE   IfODERH   SPIRIT.  147 

The  Christian  Ideal  of  human  a  omed 

up  in  the  phrase,  "Kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth." 
In  its  practdc  .  that  ideal  « 

part  Lost  Bight  of  by  the  early  <  Ihurch.    The  old  i 
Catholic  and  Calvinist  alike,  had  its  root  in 

;r  of  human   nature   and  earthly  In 

strong  contrasl  to  the  New  '1 
to  a  future  paradise  and  hell  the  solution  of  a  riddle 
which   as  we  Bee  with  Saint  Augustine   it  felt 
incompetent  to  -  >lve  in  this  world 

The  great  reaction  against  that  creed  began  with 
the  deism  and  philosophism  of  the  last  century. 

-ins  of  Voltaire,  the  i.' 

.scan,  agaii  il  faith  and  morals,  arc  more  than 

atoned,  in  the  view  of  our  generation,  by  the  intrepid 
humanity  of  the  one  and  the  sentimental  pleadings 
of  the  other  This  new  spirit,  still  fresh,  vivid,  and 
full  of  hope,  inspired  the  era  and  dictated  the  max- 
ims of  the  Revolution.  Ii  ia  jusl  over  a  hundred 
years  since  the  new  gospel  of  humanity,  the  modern 
creed  of  liberty  and  equal  right,  was  put  in  distinct 
expression  to  justify  our  declaration  of  national  inde- 
pendence, to  inspire  enthusiasm  in  a  doubtful  strug- 
gle, and  to  assert  the  principles  of  a  new  political  life. 
In  France,  what  we  Bhould  call  the  modern  Bill  of 
Rights  is  still  appealed  to  as  the  "idea  of  eighty- 
nine;"  that  is,  it  defines  the  doctrine  and  aim  of  the 
Revolution  as  against  the  old  constitution  of  S 
and  Church. 

This  new  gospel  of  humanity,  the  code  of  human 
rights,  became  a  sort  of  religion  in  its  way,  and  the 
ohject   of    as  passionate   devotion    as    any    religious 


148  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

dogma  of  the  past.  Theophilanthropy  —  as  it  was 
called  in  one  of  those  fervid  episodes  —  under  the 
banner  of  "  that  good  democrat  Jesus,"  or  of  the 
new  revolutionary  u  Supreme,"  was  an  attempt  to 
enlist  the  impassioned  enthusiasm  of  the  religious 
sentiment  in  the  war  against  privilege  and  wrong. 
Its  doctrine  was  futile,  its  forms  were  melodramatic 
and  ridiculous.  But,  as  far  as  sentiment  goes,  nothing 
was  ever  more  generous  ;  few  things,  I  should  think, 
have  been  more  sincere.  A  humble  but  very  touch- 
ing illustration  of  it  struck  my  eye  in  visiting  the 
great  School  of  the  Blind,  in  Paris,  where  the  dates 
of  charitable  foundations  and  gifts  were  the  dates  of 
successive  stages  in  the  French  Eevolution ;  and  re- 
called not  the  eras  of  prosperity  and  glory,  not  the 
splendors  of  aristocracy  and  court,  but  the  time  of 
terror,  when  the  people  felt  the  first  sense  of  a  blood- 
bought  power,  and  France  was  in  arms  against  the 
world. 

Now  from  that  period  of  revolution  our  own  has 
grown,  and  has  received  no  small  part  of  its  spirit- 
ual inheritance.  And  especially  among  us  here  in 
America.  Here,  that  sentiment  of  justice  and  equal 
right  has  been  cultivated,  for  more  than  a  century, 
as  a  sort  of  religion.  It  has  been  proclaimed  in  in- 
numerable patriotic  addresses,  and  sung  in  all  our 
national  songs,  and  incorporated  as  a  bill  of  rights  in 
our  State  constitutions,  and  made  the  only  basis  of 
political  power.  Even  now,  the  enormous  incon- 
venience of  irresponsible  suffrage  and  sentimental 
legislation  has  hardly  begun  to  check  the  fervor  of 
that  early  faith.     In  the  most  formidable  political 


i'HL   OK    TIIK    INVOLUTION.  14'.' 

crisis  wo  have  met,  the  sentiment  of  equal  liberty,  as 

much  as  the   plain   n-  *ional   union 

the  condition  and  the  II  rv. 

What  made  the  religion  of  our  politics  inspired  also 
the  reform  of  our  religion.    When  the  revoluti 
gospel  of  humanity  ha  : 
abroad,  when   the  Te  D$Um  of  the  Holy  Ai! 

been  chanted  over  its  downfall,  then  it  becanu 
of  the  task  of  Christian  Uheralisrn  to  givs  what 
true  in  it  -i),  and  baptize  it  am 

ime  of  the  Son  of  Man. 

:i<-   of  t:  Ini- 

tarianism   than  this:    that,    in    proportion    as    it    de- 

i  from  the  <>M  theology,  and 
moral  doctrini  learly  contrasted  with  the 

:  of  inherited  depravity,  it  became  oommitted  to 

rons  faith  in  human  nature,  and  more  and  mOM 

mad.'  ion  consist  in  iea  \  m  a  to  mankind. 

Thus  the  doctrine   of  peace   wi 

claimed,  with  kbhorrenofl  of  all  war,  —  a  part 

of  the  reaction  which  set  in  alter  the  tive-and-twenty 

yean  of  carnage  that  ceased  at  Water]         I      fcem- 

perance  reform  in  its  i  :t  of  th- 

gener  ml  found  nowhere  else  so  forward 

ad\(M  .  in  the  ranks  of  the  liberal  theology. 

The  l  insion  given  to  the  prevalent  id< 

(•duration,  and  the  great  improvements  in  its  method 
which  came   in   forty  or  fifty  yi  ,  had  no  more 

■salons  propagandists     When  public  attention  was 

turned  to  asylums  for  the  Mind,  and  hospitals  for  the 
insane,  ami  reformatories    for  young   offenders,   and 

humane  methods  of  prison  discipline,  —  all  these  were 


150  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

taken  up,  in  an  eager,  hopeful  way,  and  engrafted  on 
the  same  humanitarian  creed.  That  genial  optimism, 
that  faith  of  sentiment,  that  buoj^ant  confidence  in 
a  golden  future  just  opening,  when  all  the  harsher 
wrongs  that  afflict  humanity  should  melt  before  the 
rising  of  that  auspicious  sun,  —  this  made  part  of  the 
atmosphere  of  liberal  theology  of  forty  years  ago,  and 
deeply  tinged  the  light  under  which  its  younger  dis- 
ciples then  looked  forward  to  their  life-work  as  it  lay 
before  them. 

I  must  now  speak  of  a  certain  reaction  in  the  years 
that  have  followed  since.  For  two  distinct  results 
may  be  traced  as  succeeding  that  era  of  fervid  procla- 
mation and  humanitarian  faith.  The  first  is,  that  the 
faith  itself  has  been  cheapened  (as  it  were)  by  diffu- 
sion, and  takes  the  form  of  that  shallow  sentiment- 
alism  which  is  one  definite  source  of  mischief  in  the 
social  theories  of  the  day;  the  second  is  the  shape 
which  the  reaction  is  apt  to  take  with  those  who 
have  outgrown  its  crude  but  ingenuous  fervor.  A 
weak  humanitarianism  on  one  side  is  matched  against 
a  sombre  pessimism  on  the  other. 

Those  axioms  of  political  justice,  those  maxims  of 
social  ethics,  which  make  the  human  side  of  our  re- 
ligious creed,  are  each  a  half-truth  touching  some  fact 
of  human  nature  :  the  bright  or  illuminated  side,  but 
not  the  whole  of  it.  To  state  it  as  if  it  were  the 
whole  truth  makes  one  of  the  most  troublesome  of 
those  fallacies  with  wThich  morals  or  politics  has  to 
deal.  A  fallacy  of  this  sort  is  sometimes  a  rudiment- 
ary or  embryonic  truth,  sometimes  a  stranded  or  fossil 
truth.     What  is  the  inspiration  of  one  age  may  be 


■IIMENT    AND    SENTIMENTALIS.M.  151 

the  delusion  of  the  next.     What  is  the  illumination 
of  one   period   may  he  the  ig  u  of  auotlier. 

In  a  high   flood-tide  of  sentiment,  action  be 
fa        ,  which  when  the  tad  a  im- 

|  :."  :    witness   the    I  —  I 

genuine  enthusiasm  of  pioua  adventure,  under  • 
frey  or  St  Bernard;  a  dreary  and  languid  tra 
under  Simon  Montfort  or  the 
Louis.     At  the  same  flood-tide,  a  belief  be 

donate  and  fervent,  a  hero's   in  rtyr's 

Btrength,  which  Cades  on!  •  mbol, 

an  opinion,  a  ere*''],  with  the   divine  life  all  - 
away.     So  it  was  with  the  trinity,  with  tramu' 
tiatinn,  with  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible;  bo  it  is 
with  that  sentiment  of  a  Divine   II  rmanity,  which 
perpetually  tends  to  fade  into  the  thin  cold 
ntimentaliam. 
There  is  something  i  as  in  appearu 

own  thus  the  popular  •_: •  •  - j •  •  •  1  of  our  tim 
roua  in  its  sympathy,  so  gushing  in  its  philanthropy, 
so  zealous  in  its  works  of  charity,  so  honorable  t«» 
human  nature  itself  as  compared  with  the 
any  former  generation,  genial  to  our  own 

tradition  and   theory  of  Christianity.      But  we  cannot 
fail  to  see  that  the  wal  ebbing  away,  on  which 

it  floated  so  fair  and  brave  a  generation  or  two 
Men's  faith  in  human  nature  is  underg 
revision,  and  collation  with  pitil  What  is  al- 

ready part  of  our  tradition  —  what  is  taken  for  granted 
jy  assent,  not  fought  out  and  won  in  the  mind's 
own   effort   after   truth   and   the   soul's   hunger  after 
righte  —  is  no  longer  the  same  tiling.     It  is 


152  THE  RELIGION   OF  HUMANITY. 

beginning  already  to  be  debased  and  alloyed.  The 
same  gospel  of  humanity  which  Channing  made  the 
most  advanced  interpretation  of  Christianity  in  his 
day,  was  greeted  with  eager  welcome  as  the  soul  of 
a  new  thing  in  literature  when  Dickens  took  his 
heroes  from  the  work-house  and  his  heroines  from 
the  street.  Even  then  there  was  something  in  it 
melodramatic  and  false.  The  same  thing,  at  a  later 
stage,  becomes  conscious  satire  thinly  disguised,  as  in 
"  Joshua  Davidson  "  and  "  Ginx's  Baby."  Striking 
at  very  obvious  social  wrongs,  it  suggests  no  solution, 
unless  it  be  socialism  or  a  spurious  Eomanism, — as  in 
the  wretched  sophisms  and  travesties  of  Mr.  Mallock. 

Meanwhile,  since  the  Dickens  period,  —  the  period 
of  a  gushing  and  morbid  sentimentalism,  —  litera- 
ture has  taken  quite  another  phase.  It  has  become 
critical,  cynic,  weary.  Just  as  theology  becomes  eru- 
dition, as  philosophy  turns  into  formula,  and  science 
into  sterile  nomenclature,  so  in  the  arts  of  culture 
mental  analysis  goes  back  on  enthusiasm  and  faith. 
This  tone,  not  lacking  in  George  Eliot,  strongly  colors 
the  atmosphere  in  which  the  facts  of  life  and  history 
are  set  before  the  sight  of  a  younger  generation. 

So  far  as  we  are  conscious  of  it  in  our  own  mood, 
we  might  suspect  it  to  be  the  loss  of  the  natural 
glow  of  youth  as  years  go  by,  an  outgrowing  of  the 
emotions  and  aspirations  of  our  own  past.  But  it  is 
more  than  that.  In  the  generation  that  comes  after 
ours  it  is  still  more  marked  than  it  is  in  us.  The 
younger  culture  has  already  outgrown,  or  else  has 
never  shared,  the  generous  illusions  which  made  our 
own  inheritance  from  the  ^Revolutionary  age.    I  speak 


THE    REACTION.  153 

here  more  especially  of  the  cultured,  the  literary,  the 
scientific  class.  In  the  popular  mind,  less  touched 
by  the  critical  temper  of  the  time,  then  emo- 

, those generous  maxims, retsin  more  force.    Bat 
from  the  inspiration  of  a  reforming  seal  they  become 
dogmas  of  a  sentimentalising  policy.    Prom  glittering 
timet  in  front  of  battle  they 
degenerate  to  mere  falls* .  oguid 

half-truths,  whose   tide   of  truth,   even,   is   not   ! 

nised  by  those  who  think  thsy  have  outgrown  them. 

For  farts,  alas  '  hare  not 
vaticinations.     For  tl  time  in  the  world,  a 

whole  people  were  trusted  to  exhibit  the  doctrine  of 
equal  rights  in  the  government  — to 

Issue  in  the  present  condition  of  our  politics,  W« 
fondly  Impel,  we  fervently  believed,  that  t!. 

ting  away  before  the  adva       •     M-ason 
ami  humanity ;  hut,  behold  I  si 
within  five  and  twenty  -  (to  omit  suoh  tragic 

episodes  as  India  ami  ' ;  iging  the 

most  advanced  ami  powerful  Christian  nation-,  ami 
each  in  its  way  memorable  new  honor,  on 

some  vaster  scale  than  all   the  tragedies  of  tl.' 
had  quite  prepared  as  for:     Nations  ami  law 

said,   are   shaped    more    and    more    by    the   Spirit    of 

Christian  philanthropy.     But,  no!    Blood  and  iron, 

says  the  foremost  statesman  of  the  age,  —  blood  and 
iron  make  the  strong  cement  in  which  the  founda- 
tions  of  States   must   ho   laid.      And   perhaps    in   all 

human  history  the  set-ret  dread  of  war  was  never  so 
deeply  felt  as  now,  and  the  open  preparations  for  war 
were  never  half  so  fnmiidal 


154  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

Was,  then,  that  faith  in  human  nature  which  made 
the  most  choice  and  precious  part  of  our  religious 
inheritance,  —  that  which  seemed  benign  and  sure  as 
sunlight  to  our  fathers,  —  was  it  a  delusion  and  a 
dream  ?  Such  questions  many  ask  themselves  in  a 
sort  of  despair.  The  answer  can  come  only  in  a 
working  faith,  too  busy  in  act  to  speculate  on  result ; 
or  else  in  an  intellectual  faith,  which  must  grow  up 
slowly  among  the  new  conditions  of  the  time.  It  is 
quite  too  soon  to  do  more  than  guess  and  hint  what 
the  new  gospel  of  humanity  shall  be.  Despair  is  for 
the  idle  and  unfaithful,  hope  for  the  willing  and 
strong. 

Let  us  now  consider  briefly  the  background  which 
is  given  us  for  the  new  Religion  of  Humanity  in  the 
scientific  conceptions  of  the  day. 

First  of  all,  I  do  not  think  we  need  trouble  our- 
selves in  the  least  about  the  effect  of  natural  science 
upon  our  speculative  theism.  The  God  of  scientific 
theory  by  no  means  appeals  to  devout  feeling,  like 
the  Divine  Father  of  the  Christian  gospel,  but  is  at 
least  as  good  as  the  subjective  Absolute  of  meta- 
physics, and  infinitely  better  than  the  avenging  Sov- 
ereign of  the  popular  theology.  And  by  the  God  of 
scientific  theory  I  mean  simply  the  Force  —  personal 
or  impersonal  —  behind  all  phenomena,  with  which 
science,  as  such,  has  nothing  to  do ;  which  it  knows 
only  as  manifest  in  the  primary  qualities  of  matter 
and  the  laws  of  motion.  The  mystery  of  the  uni- 
verse itself  is  so  prodigious  that  it  makes  light  of 
all  our  little  differences  in  the  attempt  to  state  it. 

Consider,  for  example,  what  the  most  bigoted  ma- 


THEISM    AND    NATURAL    SCIENCE.  155 

terialist  must  embrace  in  his  summary  He 

.  es, —  such  is  hia  reliance  on  the  veracity  of 
things  —  with  absolute   conviction,  that   in   B] 
immeasurably  remote  he  h  rl  lined  tin 

of  vast  nebulae  of  Bubstances  having  t!  prop- 

erties of  elements  familiar  to  his  experiments;  that 
there  i  d  temperature,  a  given  pair  of 

them  sn  and  hydrogen    will  infallibly  unite, 

always  and  everywhere  in  proporti 
with  accuracy  moi  I  than  any 

ance  could  weigh  them  out;  that  the  vapor  thence 
resulting  will  just  as  infallibly,  at  a  given  lowei 
perature,  crystallize  in  myriads  of  frosty  stars,  with 
every  angle  measured  by  a  geometry  m  [uisite 

than  any  human  draughtsman's,  —  the  if  not 

the  act  of  perfect  Intelligence,  most  literally  pn 
in  every  Bpot,  in  every  atom.     And  this,  only  one  of 
the  simplest  of  innumerable  chemical  chai 
known  to  us;  a  rude  intermediate  pn  may 

even  call  it      What  mak;  that,  and 

y«»u   have  answered  everything      A  single  01 
Helmholtz's  whirling  rings   winch  make  the  ultimate 
form  of  molecule  as  now  conceived  by  mi 
creation  as  astonishing  ::i.     A  count 

for  that,  and  you  have,  accounted  for  everything. 

When  the  same  process  of  unfailing  accuracy  is 
traced  through  increasing  complications  of  being,  up 
to  all  forms  of  organic  growth,  without  a  single  loop- 
hole left  any  where  for  chance  or  caprice.  —  absolute 
Intelligence  seen  everywhere  in  result,  if  not  in  act, 
—  it  seems  a  very  harmless  thing,  after  all,  to  say- 
that  Matter,  so  regarded,  hns  m  it  "the  potency  and 


156  THE   KELIGION    OF   HUMANITY. 

the  promise  of  all  forms  of  life."  And  that  "  harp  of 
three  thousand  strings,"  which  Tyndall  describes  as 
existing  in  the  structure  of  the  human  ear,  shaped  by 
the  needs  and  cravings  of  the  organization  so  as  to 
respond  to  every  tone  or  finest  interval  of  musical 
sound,  —  well !  if  these  are  the  responses  and  the  po- 
tencies existing  among  material  things,  I  do  not  know 
where  we  could  possibly  go  for  a  definition  of  Crea- 
tive Intelligence,  infallible,  omnipresent,  absolute,  so 
well  as  to  the  repertory  in  which  a  thorough-going 
materialist  keeps  his  store  of  facts ;  or  to  that  curious 
summary  of  them  in  which  Hartmann  records  the 
attributes  of  "  The  Unconscious."  Special  arguments 
of  efficient  or  final  cause  seem  dwarfed  into  nothing- 
ness beside  the  simple  statement  of  the  fact.  They 
testify,  at  best,  to  the  thoughtful  and  reverent  habit 
of  the  mind  which  contemplates  the  fact. 

Scientific  theory,  then,  I  think,  is  absolutely  neu- 
tral as  to  our  speculative  theism,  serving  only  (as  it 
necessarily  must)  to  state  the  conditions  under  which 
it  must  be  held.  But  it  is  a  very  different  thing  as 
it  affects  our  religious  theism.  When  we  think  of 
the  overwhelming  vastness,  the  appalling  indifference 
to  our  interests  and  emotions,  to  all  human  pain  and 
guilt,  with  which  the  circles  of  Being  sweep  their 
everlasting  round,  can  we,  —  that  is,  under  the  ordi- 
nary limitations  of  the  human  mind,  —  can  we  think 
of  any  conscious  sympathy  between  our  own  life  and 
that  stupendous  Force?  Can  we  conceive  or  retain 
a  belief  that  events  are  intelligently  ordered,  to  work 
out  the  designs  of  "  the  highest  Wisdom  and  the  pri- 
mal Love"  ?    Dante  could  dare  to  put  those  words  on 


THK   P0BITTV1   PHILOSOPHY.  157 

the  portal  of  bis  Hell,  because  the  system  of  things 
he  knew  of  was  BO  small  and  near.     Can  we  still  hold 

thnii  true,  as  a  key  to  the  inmost  meaning  of  our 

0108,  so  vast  and  with  a  horizon  so  remote? 
In  trying  to  see  how  this  question  may  possibly 
show  itself  to  the  modern  mind,  outside  of  then:, 
circles,  one  or  two  rations  occur.     I  put  that 

'.-n  once  to  Luu:-  a.  :/. ;  and  while  he  very 
earnestly  urged  the  proof  of  Intelligent  Design  in  the 
creation,  if  seemed  to  me  that  be  did  not  find  in  na- 
ture any  very  clear  mark  of  the  ckaarartm  of  th< 

-the   only   point  Which   lias   any  other  than   a 

purely  speculative  interest  for  us.     And,  on  the 
ulatiw  side,  the  answer  given  by  most  interpret! 
science  is  simply  negative.    The  being  and  chai 
of  God  are  topics  with  which,  as  such,  it  would  ap- 
pear thai  science  has  nothing  whatever  to  da 

Now  u  is  not  easy  for  as,  who  are  trained  to  i  very 
keen  interest  in  primal  and  final  causes,  to  undei 
this  attitude  of  absolute  intellectual  indifftren 
reserve.    The  Positive  philosophy  —  or  by  whal 

oilier  name  we  call  the  general  view  of  things   taken 

by  the  scientific  mind  —  by  no  means  attempt 

foolish  and  hopeless  a  task  as  to  mecouni  Ebf  the  exis- 
tence of  anything  by  those  laws  of  phenomena  with 

which   alone    it    professes    to   deal.       Mr.    Martintau's 

very  eloquent  and  nobis  essay  dia  hum-  any  purpose 

of  arguing  with  any  form  of  Materialism  which  does 
not  show  on  its  own  principles  a  solution  to  the  prob- 
lem of  existence.  Now  no  recognized  form  of  Mate- 
rialism at  the  present  day,  surely,  attempts  any  such 
thing.      "  But,"   said  a  friend  to   Professor  Tyndall, 


158  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

"  surely  you  must  have  some  theory  of  the  Universe." 
"  My  dear  sir,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  have  not  even  a 
theory  of  Magnetism." 

This  mood  of  mind  is  not  necessarily  either  irreli- 
gious or  atheistical.  We  do  not,  as  a  general  rule, 
experience  an  access  of  religious  emotion  when  we 
light  the  gas  with  a  match,  although  the  process  is  as 
much  more  intricate  and  curious  as  it  is  more  conve- 
nient than  the  spindle  and  stick  which  our  ancestors 
held  sacred  for  thousands  of  years,  because  that  was 
the  way  the  miracle  of  fire  had  come  to  them.  Yet 
we  do  not  hold  ourselves  more  undevout  than  they. 
"  I  am  no  atheist,"  Comte  protested  vehemently :  he 
said  it  to  me  about  two  years  before  his  death.  An 
atheistic  theory  of  the  universe  lie  held  to  be  the 
mere  dotage  of  metaphysical  vanity.  If  you  will 
have  a  theory  of  existence,  he  said,  an  Intelligent 
Will  is  the  best  you  can  have.1  In  his  unique  fash- 
ion, he  held  it  the  great  work  of  his  life  to  restore  to 
Eeligion  its  supremacy  in  all  matters  of  conduct ;  the 
very  phrase  "  religion  of  humanity  "  is  claimed  as  his 
invention.  But  all  theories  of  theology,  cosmogony, 
metaphysics,  and  sidereal  astronomy  were  ruled  off 
with  impartial  rigor  from  his  intellectual  scheme,  as 
they  were  from  his  notion  of  the  service  of  Humanity 
in  a  working  world. 

And,  again,  it  is  not  easy  for  us,  dealing  as  we  do 
with  human  life  very  much  on  its  emotional  side,  in 
view  of  its  deeper  consolations  and  nobler  hopes,  to 

1  "However  imperfect  the  natural  order,  its  origin  would  agree 
far  better  with  the  supposition  of  an  Intelligent  Will  than  with 
that  of  blind  Mechanism."  —  Paliiiqw  Positive,  vol.  i  p.  51. 


Till:   SCIENTIFIC  TEMPER.  159 

conceive  the  condition  of  mental  calm  with  which  it 
may  be  looked  on  by  those  who  think  of  these  as  of 
the  dreams  of  children.  What  consolation,  we  think, 
for  those  who  do  not  accept  life  as  the  discipline  of  a 
Father  ?  What  hope  to  those  who  anticipate  nothing 
beyond  the  sensible  horizon  that  bounds  our  daj 

Questions  Buch  as  these  we  are  apt  to  argue  with  a 
certain  sense  of  persona]  responsibility  for  the  result, 
— as  if  the  reality  of  a  life  beyond  turned  on  our  own 
power  to  make  it  real  to  our  own  thought ;  as  if  one 
forfeited  his  immortality  by  being  unable  to  believe 
in  it;  as  if  it  were  impossible  for  another  to  win 

calmness   of    mind    on    any    other   terms    than    ours. 

Yet,  as  matter  of  history,  we  know  that  Spinoza  was 
singularly  calm  and  pure  in  his  subn 
of  the  Universal  Order;  as  matter  of  fact,  we  know 
that  life  does  nut  Lose  its  keen  interest,  intellectual  or 

Other,  for  those  who  deliberately  rule  out   from   their 

Bcheme  of  things  all  "thoughts  that  wander  through 
eternity."    1  have  heard  that,  in  a  convention  of  - 
hundred    European  scientists,   not    one  admitted   the 
thought  of  personal  immortality  as  possible.     Vet  the 

daily  work  of  science,  done  by  a  thousand  hands,  is  as 

diligent,  aa  devoted,  in  its  way  quite  as  contented  with 

itself,  as  the  daily  work  of  i  and  devi  ' 

But  there  i-<  a  certain  spirit  and  temper,  not  e- 
tially  connected  with  natural  science,  and  making  no 
part  of  its  creed,  which  yet  claims  close  affinity  with 
it.  And  this  spirit  or  temper  tends  more  and  more 
to  show  itself  not  simply  neutral,  not  merely  con- 
temptuously indifferent,  but  definitely  hostile  —  not 
to  this  or  that  creed  or  form  of  Christianity,  not  to  the 


160  THE   RELIGION   OF  HUMANITY. 

mere  name  of  it,  but  to  ideas  and  emotions  that  have 
always  been  held  to  belong  to  its  inmost  life.  Thus 
that  circle  of  Christian  ideas  included  in  the  words 
sin,  repentance,  pardon,  atonement,  salvation,  holiness 
—  which  we  have  ourselves  been  at  so  much  pains  to 
interpret  in  our  reading  of  the  religious  life  —  is,  as 
I  understand  it,  radically  opposed  by  the  general 
view  of  life  widely  coming  to  prevail.  As  far  as  it 
does  prevail,  those  words  will  have  not  merely  to  be 
explained,  but  to  be  explained  away.  This  hostility, 
in  so  far  as  it  does  exist,  we  ought  —  as  theologians, 
still  more  as  religious  men  —  to  look  in  the  face,  and 
understand  it  if  we  can. 

At  the  outset,  the  theory  of  Evolution  itself  is  a 
great  shock  to  the  feeling  of  the  sacredness  of  human 
life,  so  carefully  cherished  by  Christianity;  and  to 
the  sense  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  which 
marked  our  earlier  interpretation  of  Christianity. 
The  shock  will  pass  away  in  time,  and  the  religious 
feeling  will  get  adjusted  to  the  new  surroundings. 
But  let  us  do  justice  to  the  deep  repugnance  with 
which  that  theory  has  been  resented.  That  the 
mythical  first  human  pair  —  with  its  halo  of  marvel 
and  reverence,  with  the  schemes  of  history  and  the- 
ology grouped  about  it  —  should  be  displaced  by  the 
chance  coupling  of  a  superior  breed  of  "  anthropoid 
apes"  stronger  and  cunninger  than  the  rest,  with 
lower  forms  of  bestiality  in  the  background;  or,  if 
not  this,  yet  the  wild  and  brutish  savagery  of  the 
primitive  man,  out  of  which  the  race  has  fought  its 
way  to  something  better,  through  perhaps  a  thousand 
centuries'  struggle  for  existence,  —  all  this  may  be 


Till:    rHBOBY  161 

the  best  way  we   have  at  present  of  stating  the  facts; 
but,  after  all,  the  facts  are  not  it  to  look 

and  we  have  not  got  used  to  looking  at  then  j 
that  shape,  from  the  religious  point  of  view.     Our 
to  the   Humanity  that  has  Buffered  and  toiled 
•  us  is  even  enhanced  by  that  statement,  , 
U  said;   but  somehow  the   Divine  guiding 
Hand  is  not,  to  the  common  eye,  so  plain  to 

And  I         -  tin,  when   we   iii  V  the 

doom  thai  all  forma 

of  life  upon  this  planet;  when  we  learned  that  we 
could  no  longer  look  forward  to  an  indefinil 
of  p*  r  the  human  race  upon  earth,  but*  at 

the  wave  of  life  has  i.  il    must   inevitably  sub- 

lide;  when  we  saw,  I    >,  that  civilisation  itself  is  a 

~   and  that  the 

we  thought  exhau  >nomixed, 

but  must  i  I  with  a  aort  of  chill.    What 

>ur  or  five  thousand  years,  what  are  two  hundred 

land  plausibly  enough  reckoned  as  the  limit  of 

.ml  future  duration  to  the  human  race  .  in  com- 

u  with  eternity  nd  of  all 

a  and  systems  visible  to  us  is  announoi 

Science    with   a   certain    pitiless    precision  ;    and   no 
compensation  .  for  the  «  a  pre- 

sumption that  is  asserted  to  lie  against  our  hope  of 
personal  immortality.     If   human   life  in    its  origin 
looks  ignoble,  under  the  light  of  modem  th- 
more  depressing  is  the  aspect,  so  regarded,  of  its  des- 
tiny and  end. 

Now  this,  unwelcome  as  it  may  be  to  our  religious 
feeling,  is  distinctly  the  order  of  conceptions  and  ideas 

11 


162  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

which  the  religious  thinker  of  our  time  has  got  to 
meet.  For  the  present,  apart  from  religious  feeling, 
it  appears  to  have  had  two  distinct  effects  on  men's 
imagination.  The  first  is  a  certain  hard,  unsympa- 
thetic way  of  regarding  human  life  on  a  large  scale, 
—  history  merging  into  anthropology,  and  that  more 
and  more  into  natural  history,  especially  when  it 
deals  with  the  lower  races  or  classes  of  mankind,  and 
so  emerging  in  great  disdain  and  race  or  class  pride 
among  the  superior.  "  We  will  not  be  missionaries 
any  more,"  it  says,  "  and  sacrifice  ourselves  for  the 
barbarian.  Let  the  perishing  classes  go.  It  is  the 
law  of  the  struggle  for  existence  that  they  should 
perish  and  make  place  for  those  worthier  to  live  than 
they,"  —  that  is,  ourselves.  The  other  effect  is  a 
certain  dreary  and  sad  way  of  seeing  things,  as  if  the 
vast  tragedy  of  human  life  were  vulgarized,  from  the 
terror  and  the  pity  (which  make  it  human  tragedy) 
being  taken  out  of  it,  seen  from  the  austere  height  of 
modern  speculation. 

This  double  tendency,  to  aristocratic  pride  on  the 
one  side  and  a  sombre  pessimism  on  the  other,  I  do 
not  think  can  be  denied  to  be  a  very  common  and 
formidable  symptom  in  the  educated  mind  of  the  day. 
If  any  one  were  to  doubt  it,  I  should  ask  him  to  con- 
sider the  tone  of  Strauss's  retrospect,  the  pyramid- 
like ethnology  of  Kenan,  the  dreary  view  of  nature 
and  life  that  impressed  itself  on  the  keen  suscepti- 
bility of  John  Stuart  Mill,  the  deepening  gloom  that 
settled  upon  the  mind  of  Carlyle  in  his  contempt  of 
the  humaner  sentiment  of  his  day,  the  way  in  which 
questions  of  practical  philanthropy  are  dealt  with  by 


A   TENDENCY   Of   Sell.:  L63 

the  school  of  Herbert  Spencer,  or  what  is  said  of  the 
philosophy    of  Hartniiinn.  in    the   domi- 

bhought  of  Germany.     Involuntarily,  when  we 
apeak  of  "the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion,' 
think  not  of  the  poetic  paganism  which  Coleridge 
had  in  mind  when  he  wrote  the  phrase,  but  of  our 
own  younger  days,  aa  compared  with  much  of  what 

we    hear    now.      What    attacks    only   the    name  and 

creed  of  Christianity  may  not   alarm  us  much;  but 

i lit  now  i  cially 

symptoms  of  it  which  may  fa  u  the 

generation  that  is  advancing  to  take  our  pis 

But  of  this  two  things  remain  to  be  said 

The  first  is,  that  Science  itself  is  really  neutral, 

and  not  hostile.    The  representative  minds  of  science 

are  found  on  both  Bides  of  the  line  that  marks  the 

most  radical  difference  of  spiritual  theory.     And  that, 

not  only  m  the  I  those  who  hold  the  two  halves 

of  their  thought  quite  independent  and  distinct, — 
as  it  was  said  of  Faraday,  that  when  he  went  into  his 

oratory    he   tinned  the    key  of  his    laboratory,  —  but 

with  those  like  Carpenter,  men  of  Christian  habit  and 
nurture,  who  with  their  best  intelligence  adjust  and 
harmonize  the  two.  We  do  not  know  what  shape 
this  adjustment  may  take  in  time  to  come;  but  we 
may  be  very  sure  that  the  higher  nature  of  man  will 
always  claim  its  own  right  somehow. 

4'  Thai  mind  and  boh]  according  well 

May  make  one  mi. 
but  vaster"  — 

is  the  very  meaning  and  motive  of  all  sound  religious 
thinking. 


164  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

The  other  point  is  this :  that,  as  Science  affects  to 
give  no  explanation  or  account  of  things,  so  these 
must  always  be  suggested  from  another  source.  To 
say  that  we  cannot  discover  or  conceive  the  antece- 
dents of  the  visible  Universe  is  not  to  say  that  there 
are  no  such  antecedents  :  it  would  weary  us  even  to 
recount  the  postulates  that  must  be  assumed,  to  make 
the  laws  of  heredity  and  natural  selection  intelligible 
or  the  process  of  them  possible.  To  say  that  we  can 
see  nothing  beyond  the  sensible  horizon  which  bounds 
our  life  is  not  to  say  that  there  is  nothing  there :  it  is 
merely  to  leave  the  thought  of  the  Unseen  where  it 
properly  belongs,  —  to  the  heart  or  the  imagination, 
as  a  celestial  hope. 

Physical  science  accounts  for  nothing.  It  must 
involve  in  its  premises  all  it  can  possibly  evolve  in 
its  results.  Mere  evolution  from  below  —  mechani- 
cal force  working  up  into  vital,  mental,  spiritual, 
without  forethought  or  guidance  anywhere  —  is  as 
abhorrent  to  intellectual  theory  as  it  is  to  the  moral 
sense,  which  postulates  moral  freedom.  Somehow 
and  somewhere —  it  would  be  truer  to  say,  always  and 
everywhere  —  Mind  acts  back  on  Things.  The  Cos- 
mos itself  is  blank  and  unintelligible,  except  for  some 
equivalent  to  the  Christian  faith  in  a  Living  God. 

Turning  now  from  the  theoretical,  let  us  consider 
next  the  practical  side  of  the  matter. 

I  do  not  think  that,  as  a  working  faith,  the  reli- 
gion of  humanity  is  likely  ever  to  show  itself  in  a 
form  more  heroic,  more  devoted,  more  generous  and 
tender,  than  what  we  have  been  familiar  with  under 
the  older  types  of  Christianity.     From  the  very  first, 


IIT/MANITIKS   Of  THE   CHRISTIAN    CHURCH.       165 

the  Christian  faith  iry  faith.      Its 

with  such  understanding  as  men  could  Lave 

of  it,  has  been  not  to  a  select  class  or  race,  but  to  all 

mankind.     No  w  enthusiasm  of  humanity  w  is  likely 

iter  to  do  more  than  rival  the  devotion  of  the 
first  martyr  age,  when  the  world  lay  under  a  horri- 
ble threefold  yoke  of  superstition,  corruption,  and 

>tism,  and  when  the  Christian  salvation  d 
deliverance  from  all  three  ;  or  the  heroism  of  the 
great  missionary  age,  when  the  Church  found 
servants  as  SI   Ifiarl  in   B    8  Si   Pati  i 

Boniface,  and  St  Anschar  to  fight  its  battle  with  bar- 
bariem,  and  when  its  calendar  was  crowded  with  the 
names  of  those  who  fought  and  fell  io  thai 
warfare  for  humanity  of  all   history;  or  the 
sacrificing  compassion  of  such  more  modern  saints  as 
Francis  Xavier  and  Charl  \  B  n  >meo,  who  fulfilled 

their  mission  of  charily  amid  the  miseries  Of  famine 

and  pestilence  that  afflicted  the  sixteenth  century; 
or  those  missionaries  of  our  day,  who  have  carried 
their  message  of  divine  compassion  or  their  ready 

hand  to  help,   and   have    willingly    laid    down    their 

lives  among  the  squalors  of  savagery!  in  the  loneli- 
ness of  exile,  in  the  reeking  infection  of  plftgUftft  and 

prisons  and  military  hospitals, —  from  the  resolute 

and  sober  tiopof  John  lb »uard  to  those  brave 

women  who  have  worn  the  red  cross  or  tb- 
cent  through  the  horrors  of  thi       '  Eastern  war: 
N  i  form  of  piety  or  humanity  in  coming  da] 

likely  to  do    more  honor  to   the  large   Bympatfa 
which    human    nature    is    capable.      It   will    be   the 
noblest  of  triumphs,   if  the   world   is   able  to   keep 


166  THE   RELIGION   OF  HUMANITY. 

undiminished  the  splendid  inheritance  it  has  received 
in  the  record  of  these  saintly  Christian  charities  ! 

Why  not,  then,  we  may  ask,  simply  keep  that  in- 
heritance as  we  have  received  it,  and  so  hand  it  down 
to  posterity  along  with  an  improved  theology  ? 

That  is  just  what  we  desire  to  do,  but  just  where 
the  difficulty  lies.  For  the  Christian  charity  of  the 
past  was  not  simply  a  sentiment ;  it  was  a  convic- 
tion. It  rested  distinctly,  though  often  unconsciously, 
on  a  notion  of  human  nature  and  the  Divine  govern- 
ment, which  necessarily  passes  away  in  the  decay  of 
the  old  theology. 

That  theology  put  vividly  before  the  imagination 
these  three  things  :  first,  the  lost  and  miserable  con- 
dition of  mankind  in  its  present  state ;  second,  the 
inexorable  justice  of  God,  along  with  his  infinite  but 
contingent  mercy ;  third,  the  absolutely  inestimable 
value  of  eacli  single  soul,  in  view  of  the  eternity  of 
glory  or  horror  that  certainly  lay  before  it. 

These  three,  intensely  conceived  as  the  most  appall- 
ing, the  most  inspiring  of  realities,  not  only  stirred 
every  generous  nature  to  rescue  perishing  men  from 
their  impending  doom,  but  acted  very  powerfully  on 
the  springs  of  character  and  emotion  in  the  soul  itself, 
infinitely  deepening  and  quickening  the  sentiment  of 
compassion  for  human  misery  in  every  form.  The 
brutal  inhumanity  of  the  ancients,  the  tender  senti- 
mentality so  frequent  in  the  modern  world,  hardly 
seem  to  belong  to  the  same  race  of  beings  at  anything 
like  a  similar  stage  of  civilization.  Part  of  the  change 
is  due  to  race,  circumstance,  mental  refinement,  or 
the  mere  softness  of  amiable  ease ;  but  a  great  part, 


DECAY    OF    SENTIMENT.  167 

and  far  the  noblest  part,  in  the  modern  sentiment  of 
humanity  is  due  to  the  eighteen  centuries'  assiduous 
culture  of  the  Christian  Chun  :  _  distinctly  on 

a  theological  basis,  which  as  distinctly  |  -lowly 

and  inevitably  away. 

Now  while  that  sentiment  in  its  integrity  is  the 
fairest  and  noblest  thing  our  nature  has  to  show,  it 
becomes,  when  crippled  and  decayed,  one  of  the 
serious  dangers,  ami  offers  one  of  the  most   serious 
difficulties,  of  the  problem  with  which  we  have  | 
tically  to  da   Sentiment  cut  away  from  its  intell 
imentalism.     What  was  wholi 
and  Btrong  becomes  morbid  and  enfeebling.     What 
ion!  of  a  vigorou  1.  re- 

mains a  thin,  restless  ghost, a  misleading  phantom,  a 
lying  spirit    Thus  love  is  better  than  faith  or  hope, 

Paul ;  lmt  do<  t'  love "  of  the  n. 

evangel,  —  Mfi  suae  detached   from   faith  or 

hope. 

And   so  with   the  forms  of  active  charity.      If  this 

life  is  necessarily  a  highway  of  misery  and  pain, 
leading  to  an  eternity  <»t"  bliss  or  woe,  it  is  of  small 

quence  that  yen  show  mere  alm<urivin:_:  to  be  a 

cause  of  more    destitution   than    it    heals.      \V1: 

softens  this  rugged  path  to  a  single  weary 

for  a  moment,  i>  us  own  justification.  What 
multiplies,  indirectly,  the  number  of  souls,  candidates 
for  eternal  joys,  and  keeps  them  in  that  state  of  hu- 
miliation and  dependence  which  is  the  best  prelude 
rnal  joys,  has  in  it  the  promise  and  the  reward 
of  ecclesiastical  faith.  Imt  suppose  the  faith  is  gone, 
while  the  sentiment  remains:  then  the  same  form  of 


1G8  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

charity  becomes  half-hearted,  weak,  and  mischievous. 
Suppose  this  life  is  not  looked  on  as  the  inevitably 
painful  and  miserable  highway  to  another.  Suppose 
the  faith  in  that  other  life  to  grow  dim,  and  the  fear 
of  unending  misery  for  a  single  human  soul  to  be 
utterly  passed  away,  —  as  the  science  and  the  com- 
passionate temper  of  the  modern  world  manifestly 
tend :  what  have  we  left  but  a  sentimentalism,  so  to 
speak,  without  body  and  bones,  —  a  direct  hindrance 
instead  of  help  to  any  wise,  firm,  lasting  service  we 
can  hope  to  render  to  mankind  ? 

The  sentiment,  then,  assiduously  nurtured  for  so 
many  centuries  by  the  Christian  Church,  gropes  and 
pines  for  an  intellectual  foundation  to  take  the  place 
of  that  so  deeply  undermined.  It  is  one  of  the  dan- 
gers of  a  transition  time  like  ours,  that  tenderness, 
sympathy,  compassion,  on  the  one  side,  and  reason, 
intelligence,  practical  good  sense,  on  the  other,  get 
alienated  and  divorced.  The  tender-hearted  would 
inflict  no  pain ;  would  take  no  man's  life,  even  the 
guiltiest ;  would  have  all  the  suffering  and  dependent 
—  the  criminal,  pauper,  insane,  idiotic,  idle,  or  un- 
employed —  share  the  comforts  and  luxuries  which 
Nature  makes  the  hard-earned  reward  of  prudent  toil. 
The  cool  reason er  sees  that  pain  is  often  a  part  of  the 
needful  social  surgery ;  that  the  choice  must  often  be 
made  between  the  life  of  the  guilty  and  the  safety 
of  the  innocent ;  that  luxury  and  comfort,  to  those 
who  have  not  earned  or  inherited  them,  mean  a  ruin- 
ous tax  on  industry  and  an  enormous  multiplication 
of  the  distresses  it  is  sought  to  relieve. 

Thus  sentimentalism,  from  an  inspiration  of  social 


A    RELIGIOUS   THEORY    OF    LIFE. 

\  becomes  a  disturbing  element  in  social  ad- 
ministration. Unless  guided  by  a  cool  and  even 
severe  practical  judgment,  it  B  PSCtiy  to  call 

out  that  cynic  temper,  bitterest  enemy  of  humanity, 
which  says  :  "  Let  the  race,  then,  be  to  the  swift,  and 
the  battle  to  the  strong]     Let  the 

may  in  the  struggle  of  existence,  where  no  quar- 
ter is  given  to  the  helpless  and  weak!    Abolish  all 
your  charities:    the  experience  of  them  only  shows 
that  they  make  more  misery  than  they  CUTel      1 
man  for  himself,  and  the  weakest  t<>  the  wall  : "' 

Now  with  Sentimentalism  on  one  side  and  Cyni- 
cism  "11   the   other,  tie 

reconciliation.      It  i-  a  theory  0/  human 

sound  enough  t"  satisfy  bi  ,.  broad  enough  to 

admit  all  the  sympathies  and  affections  that  brighten, 

COmfoit,  purify,  and   hl<^>.      Such  a  tli. -nry  men   have 

found  in  the  past,  in  an  understanding  of  the  Chris- 
tian revelation  which  offered  an  object  of  our  worship 

in  a  glorified  Divine  Humanity,  and  mad.-  the  whole 
thought  of  this  life  solemn  by  the  radiance  or  the 
shadow  casl  upon  it  from  another  sphere.    And  many 

of  the  best  and  bravest  lovers  of  humanity  in  our  day 

see  no  other  solution  to  that  grave  question  of  the 
time  than  to  go  back,  in  humility  and  contrition, 
upon  the  path  which  the  critical  understanding 
followed  bo  farj  t.>  accept  that  yoke  of  doctrine  and 
ordinance  which,  from  being  easy  and  light,  had  be- 
come too  burdensome  to  be  borne;  and  to  restore  — 
purified,  no  doubt,  and  enlightened  —  that  spiritual 
supremacy  which  once  made  the  Church  the  sovereign 
of  all  mens  thoughts  and  lives. 


170  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

This  means,  if  we  are  consistent  in  our  logic,  to 
bring  back,  under  modern  conditions,  the  empire- 
church  of  the  Middle  Age.  And  I  do  not  hesitate  in 
the  least  to  say,  that,  if  our  method  in  this  thing  is 
to  be  ecclesiastical  at  all,  a  Catholic  Church  such  as 
we  might  easily  conceive,  under  a  spiritual  head  such 
as  the  present  Pope  appears  to  be,  —  grave,  dignified, 
austere,  cultivated,  liberal  of  temper,  —  is  by  far  the 
best  and  likeliest  solution.  It  needs  only  a  little  of 
the  wisdom  of  which  that  Church  has  shown  itself 
capable  in  the  past,  to  make  it  likely  that  very  great 
multitudes  of  this  and  the  coming  generation  will 
choose  that  way. 

But  I  shall  not  speak  here  of  the  arguments  for  or 
against  that  consummation,  or  of  anything  that  may 
be  said  of  any  form  of  compromise  in  the  creeds  of 
Protestantism.  As  I  honestly  think  —  though  here 
I  do  not  undertake  to  dogmatize  —  the  ecclesiastical 
root  out  of  which  they  all  grow  alike  is  withered,  and 
will  put  forth  no  more  new  growth.  At  any  rate, 
the  order  of  thought  with  which  we  have  most  to  do 
is  absolutely  detached  from  that  root,  and  is  growing 
in  other  soil.  The  intellectual  foundation  which  we 
have  to  assume  is  laid  not  in  Theology,  but  in  Science. 
And,  in  dealing  with  any  of  the  questions  that  touch 
the  condition,  the  destinies,  the  religion  of  humanity, 
we  must  take  in  hand,  first,  the  conceptions  given  us 
by  Science.  For  the  motive  which  Theology  made 
strong  and  victorious  in  other  days,  we  must  substi- 
tute a  motive,  if  we  can,  in  keeping  with  the  knowl- 
edge, thought,  experience,  and  opinion  of  our  own 
time. 


A   CHANGE   OF   VIEW.  171 

I  dislike  to  use  in  this  connection  the  word  "evo- 
lution," which  lias  come  to  be  a  sort  of  catch-1 
Implying  as  sharp  on  one 

supplant-  od  the  other.     Bnt  the  a 

v  of  our  time  m 
the  solutinn  we  seek     We  shall  find  it   when  v. 
find  it  at  all),  aa  that  magnificent  conception  bo 
familiar  to  in  the  modern  d 

evolution,  —  that  our  g 

mfolding  of  kunu 

This,  in  its  nan 
_  ion  of  humanity"'  make 

it   tlf  f  his  own    I  in  its 

broad  .  La  the  "religion  of  humanity"  as  the 

object  of  acientii  .   and   an  exalted 

lith. 
I  >1  i  on  •  into  the  details  which  a  full  illus- 

tration of  this  matter  would  demand     [( 

that  it  contaii  bint  of  what  must 

supply  the  place  of  the  form  dism 

at  almost  every  point      1  blem 

of  Physical   Evil  I  asking  it  the  work  of 

Qod's  greal  Adversary  ("an  enemy  hath  done  this"), 
modern  thought  makes  it  simply  one  phase  of  the 
inevitable  "stl  which  La  the  law 

of  the  animal  creation  ;  nay,  wider,  of  the  whole  or- 
ganic world.     The  problem  of  Moral  Evil :  insfc 
making  it,  as  Milton  does,  "the  ruin  of  OUT  first  par- 
—  a  Fall,  to  be  r  I  by  sacrifice  and  pain 

of  expiation.  —  the  modern  view  Bhows  it  to  reside  in 
that  realm  of  passion  and  appetite  which  we  share 


172  THE   RELIGION   OF   HUMANITY. 

with  all  living  creatures,  by  which  they  and  we  are 
equipped  for  that  struggle  of  animal  existence,  — 
which  is  more  and  more  put  in  the  background  and 
trampled  under  foot,  in  proportion  as  our  human  ca- 
pacity and  quality  become  developed.  The  theory  of 
Moral  Duty :  it  is  made  to  depend  no  longer  on  the 
arbitrary  edict  of  a  Divine  Sovereign,  and  the  reward 
or  penalty  imposed  by  an  Eternal  Judge,  but  on  those 
conditions  of  happiness  and  advancement,  on  the  un- 
folding of  the  affections,  sympathy,  and  sense  of  right, 
which  are  ascertained  to  be  a  part  of  the  law  of  our 
being  here. 

I  might  continue  this  list  through  the  whole  cata- 
logue of  moral  and  religious  obligations,  or  points  of 
faith.  But  the  obvious  thing  in  them  all  is  the  very 
thing  which  I  wish  to  emphasize.  It  is  that,  step  by 
step,  the  theological  is  supplanted  by  the  scientific, 
the  divine  by  the  human  view.  It  is,  in  other  words, 
a  "  religion  of  humanity,"  taking  the  place,  in  our 
generation,  of  a  religion  of  theosophy.  Its  founda- 
tion is  Law,  not  Dogma.  Speculative  theology  has 
no  longer  any  place  in  it,  as  defining  arbitrarily  the 
nature  and  character  of  our  obligations,  any  more 
than  it  has  in  shaping  our  views  of  history  and 
cosmogony. 

The  thought  of  a  Divine  existence,  of  an  infinite 
Will,  remains,  —  but  only  to  give  lift  to  imagination, 
gravity  to  reflection,  reverence  to  the  temper  of  the 
soul,  and  a  foundation  of  gratitude  and  trust.  Its 
value  is  less  speculative  than  emotional.  It  is  to  be 
known  not  in  dogmatic  assertion,  but  through  such 
symbol  as  we  may  imperfectly  apprehend  it  by, — 


THE   PROVINCE   OF   RELIGION.  173 

the  Life  of  the  Universe,  the  Source  of  all  Being,  the 
Object  of  our  adoration  as  we  aspire  more  and  more 
to  the  higher  life     I  Jut  when  it  conns  to  the  task  of 
interpretation  and  instruction  and  guidance,  then  it 
is  the  lesson  of  experience  and  the  word  of  Bcience 
that  we  need     History,  politics,  economy,  Bocia] 
tics  and  dynamics,  the  laws  of  wealth,  th< 
charity,  the  laws  of  character  and  heredity,  the  laws 
of  population,  the  laws  of  crime,  —  tin- a-  must  make 
the  subject-matter  of  our  study,  when  we  seek  I 
low  out  any  line  of  practical  duty  and  morals,     It  is 
with  these,  and  not  with  any  theological  schen 
duty  and  opinion,  that   <>ur  nobler  sentiment 
sweet  and  charitable  emotions,  will  have  to  1"'  P 
ciled. 

One  other  stepi  I,  to  give  the  full  breadth 

of  meaning  in  our  phrase,  "  religion  of  humanity."    It 
La  very  characteristic  of  the  thought  of  the  pr» 

day.  that  it  has  followed  up,  with  extraordinary  in- 
dustry and  zeal,  the  study  of  Comparative  religions. 
So  long  as  Religion  was  thought  of  as  consisting  in 
one  single,  unalterable,  revealed  type  of  morals  and 
doctrine,  it.  had  to  be  the  religion  of  a  ra 
church,  or  dispensation,  and  not  of  humanity  at  I 
A>  late  as  fifty  year-  ago,  to  the  average  mind,  the 
terms  "Mahometan  and  Pagan*1  were  enough  to  map 
out,  rule  out,  cast  contempt  upon,  all  forms  of  faith 
outside  the  Christian  world.  Thus  "  Imposture"  and 
"Idolatry'"  were  the  words  sufficient  to  cover  them 
all  in  a  certain  lofty,  possihly  pitying,  condemnation  : 
—  at  best  pity ;  never  an  approach  to  sympathy  or 
respect. 


174  THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY. 

Contrast  with  this  the  wealth  of  knowledge,  the 
greater  accuracy  of  discrimination,  the  attitude  even 
of  discipleship  toward  special  phases  of  mental  or 
moral  life,  found  in  the  study  of  the  world-religions 
to-day !  The  patient,  homely,  plodding  morals  of 
Confucius ;  the  charity,  humility,  and  austerity  of  the 
Buddhists,  with  their  strange  tenderness  to  inferior 
creatures;  the  wild  Brahman  imagination,  with  its 
ancient  and  elevated  forms  of  piety ;  the  Parsee  wor- 
ship of  Light  and  struggle  with  the  powers  of  Dark- 
ness, from  which  the  battle  of  Good  and  Evil  was 
adopted  into  our  own  doctrinal  tradition ;  the  ad- 
venturous enthusiasm  contrasting  with  the  absolute 
submission  of  Islamism ;  "  the  fair  humanities  of 
old  religion"  in  Greece  and  Eome,  with  what  may 
be  gathered  from  remoter  Egypt  and  Assyria,  —  these 
make  up  the  rich,  varied,  magnificently  impressive 
panorama  of  the  great  faiths  of  mankind,  before  or 
beside  the  traditions  of  our  Bible  or  creed.  How 
striking,  how  immense  the  contrast  presented  in  this 
view,  when  set  beside  the  horror  and  repugnance  of 
the  early  Church,  and  the  virulent  hate  or  else  pity- 
ing scorn  of  the  later  Church,  for  all  forms  of  faith 
except  its  own ! 

It  is  the  task  of  the  Eeligion  of  Humanity  not 
simply  to  recognize  the  broad  field  of  various  beliefs 
in  which  the  races  of  mankind  have  been  trained,  but, 
far  more,  to  recognize  whatever  common  spirit  of  jus- 
tice, mercy,  and  truth  may  be  in  them  all.  It  is  not 
itself  the  creation  of  science,  or  the  outgrowth  of  those 
comparative  studies.  It  takes  science  for  its  instruc- 
tor and  guide ;   it  takes  comparative  study  for  its 


[PABATIVE   BELICH  175 

wealth  of  illustration.  But  in  itself  it  is  that  spirit 
of  consecration  to  a  better  life,  of  willing  service  to 
mankind,  which  avails  itself  of  these  guides  and 
helps.     Its  aim  will  be  to  gather  and  |  what- 

ever is  good  in  the  tradition  to  be  found  from  every 
source.  But  for  this  it  must  have  an  independent 
life  of  its  own,  —  as  much  as  the  corn  that  is  pi 
or  the  acorn  that  is  dropped  in  a  soil  enriched  by  the 
wash  of  a  continent  Without  it,  the  richest  of 
will  give  us  nothing  but  weeds.  The  characteristic 
life  was  hidden  in  the  tree  from  which  the  acorn 
fell,  or  the  harvest-field  from  which  the  corn  was 
gathered. 

[tis  the  chi(  4  Christianity  to  have  se<  i 

and  ripened  the  seed  that  was  to  be  cast  inl 

erous  a  soil.     The  of  humanity  hereafter  may 

be  more  wise,  more  fruitful,  more  various;  but  it  will 
never  be  more  tender,  generous,  and  devout  than  it 
has  been  during  the  1  of  its  training,    The 

air  foundation    H  is  under- 

mined and  fast  crumbling  away.     In  that  process  of 

undermining,  I  nitarianism  has  had  its  share  to  do. 
A   candid  view  of  it  will  show  that   it   has   done  its 

task,  in  the  main,  with  a  reverent,  patient,  horn 

not  always  a  skilful  hand.  Partly  in  the  work  it  has 
done,  but  much  more  in  the  minds  it  has  nurtured 
and  the  souls  it  has  comforted  and  fed,  it  has  given 
its  share  towards  preparing  the  way  for  a  broader 
and  stronger  life. 


VIII. 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  LIBEEALISM. 

MY  object,  in  what  I  have  now  to  say,  will  be  to 
consider,  as  attentively  as  I  can,  some  phases 
of  religious  thought  and  life  which  come  nearest 
home  to  us,  especially  those  included  under  the  broad 
term  Liberalism. 

But  I  wish  to  hint,  at  the  start,  the  limitation  con- 
tained in  the  phrase  "Gospel  of  Liberalism."  A 
gospel  is  not  a  theory  or  a  sentiment  or  a  speculation 
or  a  creed.  It  is  something  greatly  more  noble  and 
broad  than  either.  It  addresses  not  primarily  the 
understanding  or  the  affection,  but  the  conscience  and 
the  soul.  To  the  one,  it  is  a  law  of  life ;  to  the  other, 
it  is  a  home  of  rest.  It  means  an  authority  that 
commands  obedience,  and  a  deep  foundation  of  spirit- 
ual peace.  A  gospel  is  something  to  live  by,  and  it 
is  also  something  to  die  by.  Above  is  Duty,  "  stern 
daughter  of  the  voice  of  God ; "  underneath  are  the 
Everlasting  Arms.  What  we  call  a  gospel,  then, — 
as  distinct  from  a  theory,  a  sentiment,  a  speculation, 
or  a  creed,  —  contains  these  two  fundamental  ele- 
ments of  the  religious  life.  And  it  is  in  view  of 
these  —  that  is,  with  a  practical  and  not  a  speculative 
aim  —  that  I  shall  attempt  to  trace  some  of  the  bear- 
ings of  our  position,  here  and  now. 


OUR  OWN  posit;  1  77 

I  :  the  Harvard  Divinity  School  has  been  con- 
nected, in  a  very  special  way,  with  the  history  of 
religious  liberalism  in  this  country,  and  is  responsible 
for  a  good  many  of  its  feature*.  I  need  not  recite 
the  list  of  bright  names  that  are  scattered  along  its 
record,  running  back  now  sixty-five  years,  —  that  is, 
nearly  two  generations  of  the  sons  of  men.  You  will 
recall  them  easily  in  one  swift  glance  of  memory; 
and  you  will  see  how  they  not  only  include  those 
names  of  love  and  honor  which  represent  the  mo 
learning  and  soberer  piety  of  an  earlier  time,  but 
cover  the  most  radical  and   brilliant   thought   of  a 

young  ttion,  that  an*  rapidly  pushing  Dfl  who 

stand  on  th«-  ripe  side  of  fifty  towards  the  eternal 
shadow.     It    i-^  ii"t   for  as,  certainly  not   I 
much  as  by  a  thought  or  hint,  to  disown  either  por- 
tion of  ;t  life  so  broad  and  ample.     If  I  might  be 
allowed  to  saya  word  for  myself,  it  would  be  that  my 

heart  lives  SO  largely  in  the  gracious  and  venerable 
of  our  eoniniunion.  and  that  my  thought  goes 
forward  with  SO  keen  and  active  sympathy  with  those 
younger  minds  to  whom  the  privilege  of  my  place 
brings  me  into  daily  near  relation,  that  it  would  be 
impossible  for  me  to  say  a  word  that  should   put   me, 

consciously,  at  difference  with  a  Bingle  phase  of  it 

that  has  been  honestly  thought  or  lived. 

And  yet  my  purpose  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
vague  glorying  ami  complacency  which  are  often  in 
what  we  say  when  we  speak  of  the  triumphs  and  ad- 
vances of  liberal  thought.  On  the  contrary,  the  tem- 
per in  which  we  have  just  now  to  regard  the  situation 
is  that  which  sees  it  as  grave,  perhaps  critical ;  at 
12 


178  THE   GOSPEL   OF   LIBERALISM. 

least,  which  is  willing  to  see  what  there  is  in  it  of 
grave  and  critical.  Of  all  forms  of  Epicurean  de- 
light, perhaps  the  most  repugnant  to  such  a  temper  is 
the  easy-going  optimism  which  turns  religion  into  an 
idle  sentiment,  and  parades,  under  the  name  "lib- 
eral," an  inane  triumph  at  the  mere  levelling  of  the 
shrines  of  an  austerer  faith.  The  walls  of  old  Error 
may  fall  to  the  sound  of  trumpets  and  shouting.  The 
bulwarks  and  palaces  of  the  new  City  of  God  will 
never  be  built  but  through  skill  and  patience  and 
toil  and  prayer  and  pain,  one  hand  holding  a  weapon 
to  strike  for  the  Truth,  the  other  a  tool  to  build  for 
the  Life. 

I  do  not  speak  of  our  denominational  fortunes,  or 
the  prospects  of  any  particular  form  of  opinion  and 
belief  that  we  may  hold  in  common.  But  it  is  true, 
now  as  ever,  that  the  Power  which  presides  in  hu- 
man things  exacts  heavy  pledges  of  fidelity  of  the 
agents  honored  and  commissioned  to  do  its  work. 
The  prophetic  office  was  evermore  a  "  burden ; "  and 
it  was  never  taken  up  with  a  light  heart  by  any  one 
worthy  and  fit  to  carry  it.  He  is  "  driven  of  the 
Spirit,"  like  Jesus.  A  "  necessity  is  laid  upon  him," 
like  Paul.  And,  as  Milton  says,  "  When  God  com- 
mands to  take  the  trumpet,  and  blow  a  dolorous  or 
jarring  blast,  it  lies  not  in  man's  will  what  he  shall 
say  or  what  he  shall  conceal."  The  occasion  is  al- 
ways great  to  him  who  can  conceive  it  greatly.  And 
the  greatness  of  the  occasion  is  measured  not  by  the 
joy  and  applause  alone,  or  the  expanding  sense  of 
power,  but  by  the  pain  and  fear  and  danger  of  the 
way,  and  by  the  weight  of  that  burden  of  misery  and 


ni:kd   Of   a   GOBPEL 

want  and  crime  which  our  Gospel  is  commissioned 
to  relieve. 

So,  then,  what  we  mean  by  a  G  pel  of  Liberal- 
ism,'1 if  there  is  Buch  a  thing,  Lb  not  a  theory  that  fits 
smooth  and  soft  to  the  methods  of  oar  understand- 
ing; not  a  sentiment,  bright,  comfortable,  and 
to  the  moods  of  our  emotion.  Nor  is  it  even,  in  a 
more  generous  way,  that  I  rmpathyand 

faction  with  which    we  feel  OUTSelveS   t<>  walk   in   tin; 

direction  of  the  world's  pro  ad  to  work  in  the 

front  lines  of  the  world's  work. 

It  is  not  Bummed  up,  again,  in  the  word  Culture, 

which  had  a  Cert  iin   claim  to  be  the  :_'h<]><'1   of  half  a 

century  ago,      ao  matter  how   ;  rich,  and  deep 

ense  we  give  thai  word;  any  more  than  in  the 

older  and  profounder  word  Salvation,  narrowed  to 
mean  our  own  rescue  from  the  wrath  to  ooma  Its 
watchword   is    at  once   lowlier  and  nobler,  —  that  is, 

Service.  And  it  is  not  till  we  have  measured  the 
whole  sweep  of  the  peril,  tic  terror,  and  the  wrong 

from  which  mankind  is  to  he  delivered  ;  not  till  we 
have  Bounded  that  deep  sea  <>!'  unbelief,  ungodliness, 

despair  of  the  future,  which  threatens  to  drown  men, 
as  of  old,  in  destruction  and  perdition  ;  not  till  we 
know  in  <Mir  hearts  the  hollowneSfl  of  a  refined  mate- 
rialism and  the  empty  mockery  of  its  Epi 
creed,  —  that  we  begin  to  know  the  privilege  and  the 
burden  that  belong  to  our  better  faith. 

Now  I  have  been  using  words  and  phrases  and 
availing  myself  of  sentiments  which  belong,  as  some 
would  say,  to  the  old  theology,  and  have  no  place  left 
in  the  smooth  and  comfortable  Liberalism  of  the  dav. 


180  THE   GOSPEL   OF   LIBERALISM. 

The  Devil  is  dead,  they  say,  and  the  fires  of  hell  are 
put  out.  What  need  have  we  of  salvation,  and  what 
meaning  can  we  find  in  it  ?  If  any  should  say  this, 
or  feel  this,  then  I  should  reply  that  that  is  just  the 
fallacy  it  is  our  business  to  meet.  We  have  a  mes- 
sage to  the  world  of  some  sort ;  at  least,  we  think  we 
have,  or  else  it  is  with  very  vain  thoughts  indeed  that 
we  undertake  to  meet  the  life-problems  which  occupy 
us  to-day.  The  adequacy  of  that  message  depends  on 
our  being  able  to  share  not  only  the  fresh  vigor  and 
breadth  of  modern  thought,  but  the  sweetness,  the 
fervor,  the  devout  aspiration,  the  hate  of  evil  also, 
and  the  consecrated  will,  which  are  the  sacred  tradi- 
tions and  the  birthright  of  our  Christian  faith. 

In  what  is  left  for  me  to  say,  I  shall  attempt,  if  not 
to  interpret  that  message,  at  least  the  more  modest 
task  of  grouping  a  few  points  that  may  help  show  the 
direction  in  which  the  interpretation  is  to  be  found. 
It  is  properly  of  two  sorts,  —  theoretic  or  intellectual, 
and  religious  or  practical.  A  few  words  are  due  to 
each. 

Of  the  first,  I  will  only  say  that  for  the  intellec- 
tual solution  of  the  questions  which  lie  so  near  our 
thought,  —  what  is  sometimes  called  the  reconcilia- 
tion  of  knowledge  and  faith,  —  I  am  sure  that  we 
must  look  a  great  way  farther  off  than  most  of  us 
have  been  accustomed  to  think.  By  this  I  mean  a 
solution  accepted  by  the  thinking  world  at  large  : 
we  all,  I  trust,  have  found  the  practical  solution  to 
the  problem  of  our  own  life.  But,  more  broadly,  we 
have  thus  far  only  secured  (more  or  less  completely) 
the   mutual    independence  of  Science   and  Religion. 


;ivk.  181 

For  their  mutual  harmony  we  have  doubtless  very 
long  to  wait.  It  is  told  of  the  statesman  Cavour, 
that,  no't  long  before  his  death,  he  said  those  of  the 
younger  generation  were  fco  be  envied;  f<»r,  before  the 
end  of  the  century,  they  would  witness  the  grandest 
of  historical  events,  the  birth  of  a  new  religion,  i':  - 
phets,  says  Mr.  Martineau,  are  apt  to  be  mistaken  in 
their  dates.  I  BUppoee  that  what  Cavour  had  in  mind 
K>me  Positivist  conception, mon  (distinctly 

realized,  of  what  is  coming  to  be  called  "the  religion 

of  humanity."     Whether  that  Of  DOt,  at  all 

•    Borne  sort  of  "  i  iliation  — 

sum.-   visible   organization,  perha]  stent, 

at,  and  lil«',  which  are  so  grievously  at  discord 

now. 

But  any  "positive"  theory  of  know]  very 

tar,  as  yet,  from  making  the  basifl  of  a  religion.     For 

tie-  realisation  ho  talked  of  it  would  l»c  cheap  t>>  wait 

not  twenty  years,  hut  ten  or  twenty  times  as  long. 
Consider  that  it  has  already  taken  four  hundred  years, 
since  the  ghastly  collapse  of  Mediaeval  faith,  to  bring 

us   where    we   are.      Consider  the   taskfl   of  scientific 
theology  yet  before  as,  hardly  attempted  or  1 
OOnsider  the    slow  development   of   an   independent 
ethics,  large   and  delicate   enough  t<>   take   in  all  the 

complexities  of  modern  life:  —  and  these  are  hut  two 
of  the  conditions.  Any  perspective  shallower  than 
that  of  centuries  will  scarce  give  OS  the  equipoise  we 

need,  in  dealing  with  so  large  issa 

We  are  working  unconsciously  —  we  ought  to  be 
working  consciously — for  a  future  that  is  a  great  way 
off.     The  intellectual    patience   so  essential,  without 


182  THE   GOSPEL   OF  LIBERALISM. 

any  lack  of  ethical  fervor,  can  absolutely  be  had  only 
by  the  familiar  habit  of  dealing  with  historic  periods 
and  long  lapses  of  time.  "  Providence,"  says  some 
French  writer,  "moves  through  time  as  the  gods  of 
Homer  through  space  :  it  takes  a  step,  and  ages  have 
rolled  away."  But  we  fidget  and  are  impatient.  At 
every  little  advance  of  our  knowledge  we  must  out 
with  our  pocket-rule,  and  measure  how  the  new  piece 
will  fit  the  majestic  heavens  and  the  rolling  earth. 
At  each  fresh  phrase  of  each  new  school  in  meta- 
physics we  fancy  we  have  found,  at  length,  an  ade- 
quate theory  of  creation  and  providence.  These 
theories,  all  the  way  from  Plato  down  to  Spencer,  are 
the  playthings  of  the  mind ;  and  we  use  them,  as 
children  do,  in  childlike  unconsciousness  of  the  dif- 
ference in  scale  between  those  crystal  spheres  and  our 
round  nursery  globes.  In  my  own  brief  recollection, 
two  or  three  very  promising  theories  of  the  universe 
have  come  up  as  a  flower  and  been  cut  down ;  and  I 
fully  expect  to  outlive  that  which  seems  most  fash- 
ionable now. 

I  have  no  mind  here  to  criticise  the  philosophy 
of  Evolution,  so  called,  either  for  attack  or  defence. 
That  task  should  be  left  to  competent  specialists. 
An  amateur  in  such  things  is  apt  to  be  a  bungler, 
and  most  of  us  are  amateurs.  It  would  even  be  an 
impertinence  in  me  to  say  that  I  accept  the  theory, 
—  except  as  probably  the  most  instructive,  certainly 
the  most  entertaining,  way  to  co-ordinate  and  har- 
monize certain  known  facts,  and  help  us  deal  with 
them  practically ;  not  at  all  to  account  for  them,  in 
any  philosophical  sense,  theoretically.      To  account 


A    FATALISTIC    DRIFT.  183 

for  facts  of  life  by  laws  of  growth,  for  existence  by 
laws   of   similitude  and  BU  I    of  phenomena,  is 

too  plain  than  an  all 

to  it  hen.-.     It  is  only  the  presumption   which 
expounders  of  the  new  creed  have  found  in  it,  in  the 
direction  of  fatalism  and  denial  of  the  moral  life,  that 
justifies  even  this  allusion, 

Not  that  these  premature  assumptions  are  matter 
of  complaint  i  from  <»ur  point  of  view.     Ou 

the  contrary,  it  is  ground  of  real  congratulation,  as 
:        Is  the  true  interests  of  the  religious  life,  that 
the  theory  has  been  run  out  so  East  in  the  din 
of  blank  and   blind   v  y ;   that  m  has 

shown  us  hand,  before  the  capacity  of  devout  emo- 
tion or  moral  enthusiasm  had  been  slowly  smothered 
under  it.  The  brutal  materialism  which  we  have  seen 
cited  in  Buchner's  exposition  of  it  strikes  quick,  like 
those  swift  sounding-leads  that  go  like  a  bullet  into 
the  sea-depth-,  against  the  indomitable  bottom  fad 

of  human  consciousness,  tl  of  moral  fir.  (loin. 

As  soon  a^  we  Bee  just  what  that  logic  can  do,  and 

JU81  how  far  it  will  go,  we  may  breathe  free  again, 
and   take   Up,  cheerily   and    patiently    B  .   the 

suspended  thread  of  the  relig  i  lotion. 

Our  relation  as  "  scientific  "  theologians  to  the 
larger  world  of  science  is  at  once  that  of  willing 
learners,  and  of  independent  co-workers  and  explor- 
ers. We  want  the  enterprise  and  coinage  of  natural 
science,  not  its  limitations;  it-  freedom,  not  its  hon- 
or constraint;  most  of  all.  its  affirmations  ;  least 
of  all,  its  denials.  What  it  can  give  us  we  take  for 
our  help;  but  there  is  no  need  that  we  put  ourselves 


184  THE   GOSPEL   OF   LIBERALISM. 

1 

in  servitude  to  any  man  or  creed  or  school  that  claims 
to  speak  its  final  word.  We  have  to  do,  not  with 
cosmogonies,  whether  gnostic  or  agnostic,  or  with 
theories  about  the  origin  of  the  lower  forms  of  life. 
Our  proper  business  is  with  the  highest  forms  of  all. 
We  were  not  in  at  the  birth  of  things,  and  we  shall 
not  be  in  at  the  death.  Not  where  life  begins,  and 
not  where  it  ends,  but  where  it  culminates,  is  the 
portion  of  it  given  us  to  explore. 

Our  business,  as  explorers,  is  with  primary  facts  of 
human  experience,  and  with  what,  in  scientific  phrase, 
are  called  "  laws  of  similitude  and  succession  "  of  those 
facts ;  that  is,  the  laws  of  human  character,  human 
life,  human  destiny,  within  the  horizon  that  bounds  our 
observation.  The  "phenomena"  we  have  to  watch 
include  the  height  of  aspiration,  the  depth  of  passion 
and  contrition,  the  wealth  of  experience,  which  make 
up  the  higher  life  of  men.  The  "  facts  "  we  are  called 
to  study  and  account  for  are  known  by  such  grand 
names  as  salvation,  regeneration,  atonement,  holiness, 
religious  peace,  faith,  self-knowledge  and  self-conse- 
cration born  out  of  conviction  and  experience  of  sin. 
These,  on  their  human  side  at  least,  are  neither 
"improvable"  nor  " unverifiable." 

Now  those  great  words  mean  something:  for  us, 
not  (it  may  be)  dogmatically,  but  at  any  rate  relig- 
iously. It  is  our  business  to  find  out  what  they 
mean.  Their  religious  sense,  rightly  caught,  becomes 
their  scientific  sense.  Most  likely  we  reject  the  dog- 
matic sense  fastened  on  them  in  the  old  theology. 
But  the  moment  we  ask  what  brought  them  into  use 
at  all,  what  has  given  them  their  weight  and  power 


DATA    OF   THE    RELIGIOUS    LIFE. 

I ors  in  human  life,  we  see  that  we  are  dealing 
with  *  foundat:  character  an  I 

duct.     While  Christianity  is  the  a 
of  those  v.  holds  tl. 

situation.      Without    I 
call-  .  i  fumble  about  the  1 

.:  evet  \  nted —  of  its 

spect 
from 

the  full  meani 
• 

human  history.     Iiti.  ha  thin]  scien- 

tific theol  be  found,  not   in 

being, 
but  in  adding  <>ur  indej 

azploi  k  of  data  and   | 

.   which   any 

most 

Our  I  field  is  tb  which  lie 

-  character  and  conduct  ;  or,  I  : 
which  ha 
forward   t  of  human  instil 

and  even;-      W 
and  -  .  which  aim] 

roblem  by  ignorii  .  and  im- 

portant of  its  conditions.     The  higl  in  human 

natur  inch  a  fact,  and  as  valid 

any   number  co-ordii. 

of  the  Uni 
at  lar_  gin  of  life 

as  a  molh>  .  I         whatever  for 


186  THE  GOSPEL   OF   LIBERALISM. 

we  translate  our  thought,  the  thought  remains  true 
that  Life  ebbs  and  flows  in  the  veins  of  the  mighty 
Mother  that  has  borne  us  all,  and  has  its  source  in 
the  Heart  of  all  things,  which  we  can  call  only  mys- 
terious and  Divine. 

And  now,  a  word  as  to  the  situation.  A  few  years 
ago  grave  warning  was  given,  under  the  alarm-cry 
"  Eocks  Ahead,"  of  a  widening  gulf  between  the 
popular  faith  and  the  belief  or  no-belief  of  educated 
minds.  Our  own  public  has  heard  something  since 
of  the  peril  of  a  "  moral  interregnum,"  and  of  "  cer- 
tain dangerous  tendencies  in  American  life,"  threat- 
ening from  the  divorce  which  to  many  eyes  seems 
imminent  between  the  science  and  the  religion  of 
our  time.  I  take  these  hints  simply  to  fix  our  point 
of  view,  not  seeking  to  add  emphasis  to  them  by  any 
words  of  mine.  After  all,  the  spectre  of  doubt  or 
disbelief  must  be  looked  straight  in  the  face,  to  see 
what  it  really  is.  It  will  not  vanish  by  any  pious 
closing  of  our  eyes  to  it. 

The  problem,  to  be  sure,  is  no  new  one.  It  is  just 
over  seven  hundred  years  since  the  Mediaeval  Church, 
startled  from  its  sense  of  secure  dominion,  began  to 
feel  its  way  slowly,  with  many  a  misgiving  and  hor- 
rible recoil,  towards  the  suppression  of  dissent  by 
force.  What  that  led  to,  we  know  by  such  names 
of  terror  and  hate  as  the  Inquisition  and  the  Wars  of 
Eeligion.  Those  methods  are  now  by  some  three  cen- 
turies happily  obsolete.  What  we  have  now  to  heed 
is  not  so  much  the  world's  hate  as  its  indifference 
and  contempt,  —  a  phenomenon  new  to  our  time,  in 


HISTORICAL   CONDITIO] 

strong  contrast  to  the  passions  and  violences  of  the 
past.     A  thou  I   force,  the  ac- 

tive thought,  the  political  life,  drifted  just  as  steadily 
towards  the  great  Catholic  organization  as  they  are 
drifting  from  it  now.  Allinn^p  of  (  hurch  and  Empire 
was  as  natural,  as  needful  then  M  the  divorce  of 
secular  and  spiritual  authority  -.lay. 

Charlemagne  v.  much  a  product  <>f  his  ti::. 

Gladstone  and  Bismarck  are  of  ours. 

Let  as  i  moment  on  the  signifi  .  1  the 

bearing  of  that  change.     Its  movement  is  liketl 

logy.     Its  ultiin 
in  the  elemental  life  of  tli:'  IT  be- 

yond the  strength  of  the  '  will,  tl. 

the  most  skilful  policy,  t<>  control  That  i>  why  we 
call  it  "drift"  :   its  course  i-  d<  1  QOt  by  con- 

scious engineering;  hut  by  granite  walls  of  circum- 
stance.    Hildebrand   and    Barbaroesa   break  vainly, 
alike,  againsl    those  adamant   hound-.     Their  work  is 
caught  up  and  swept  on,  alike,  by  that  n 
At  best,   we,    may  do    something    to    understand   the 

and  Bweep  i  historic  fon 

likely  that  any  effort  or  thought  of  ours  will  do  much 
to  help  or  thwart  them. 

But,  indirectly,  thought  n  thing  t«» 

trol  the  movement  which  it  is  impotent  of  itself  to 
create  or  check.  Else,  why  endure  the  burden  and 
pain  that  go  with  all  serious  thinking  \  Even  that 
vast  curve,  which  at  first  sight  seems  to  trace  out 
fatally  the  orbit  of  human  things,  it  may  be  possible 
to  deflect  a  little,  as  soon  as  we  can  read  its  formula 
and  understand  the  law  of  its  ^pneration.     Events  in 


188  THE   GOSPEL   OF   LIBERALISM. 

the  large  are  ordered  by  a  Power  as  much  beyond 
our  comprehension  as  beyond  our  reach.  Events  in 
detail  are  ruled  for  the  time  by  passion,  compulsion, 
and  authority.  Providence  is  on  the  side  of  the 
strongest  regiments,  when  a  particular  issue  is  to  be 
fought  out.  But  in  the  long  run  of  any  one  genera- 
tion, —  much  more,  of  a  hundred  years,  or  of  twenty 
generations,  —  the  course  of  events  is  guided  by  the 
course  of  general  opinion.  Thought  is  the  engineer 
that  traces  the  channel  of  the  stream,  deepening  it 
here,  cutting  it  off  there,  and  so  at  length  controlling 
its  direction.  Science  finds  and  equips  the  pioneers, 
who  go  in  advance  of  those  strongest  regiments.  Its 
pioneer  work,  for  us,  has  been  well  and  thoroughly 
done.  Liberalism,  following  close,  is  already  well 
able  to  hold  the  field  of  mind.  There  is  little  to 
dread  from  the  spiritual  despotisms  of  the  past. 
Whatever  disturbance  religious  passion  may  bring 
into  the  political  conflicts  of  the  day,  Thought  at  least 
is  free.  ,  A  reaction  towards  ecclesiastical  tyranny 
is  neither  possible  (we  may  hope),  nor  even  conceiv- 
able. 

Yet  Liberalism  cannot  afford  to  extenuate  or  dis- 
parage the  forces  of  its  two  great  adversaries,  Ecclesi- 
asticism  and  Dogma.  Outside  the  range  of  pure 
intellect,  it  is  as  yet  far  inferior  to  either.  In  the 
sphere  of  religious  education,  pious  emotion,  and  moral 
influence,  the  Papal  Church  is  all  the  stronger,  perhaps, 
since  twelve  years  ago  it  was  disencumbered  of  its 
hampering  temporalities.  One  word  from  the  Vatican 
to-day  could  stir  or  still  a  tempest  of  religious  fanati- 
cism in  Dublin,  Vienna,  or  Warsaw ;  in  Quebec,  New 


IBM   AND   DOGMA.  180 

York,  or  San  Francisco.  Home  has  even  some  special 
advantage  here,  in  the  easiness  of  our  laws,  in  the 
enormous  accumulation  of  untaxed  property 
pecially  in  the  great  immigration  of  its  obedient  sub- 
jects, who  vote  as  they  are  told,  whose  party  leaden 
are  true  to  that  one  interest,  and  who  have  been  said 
to  hold  twice  as   much   political   pt  I   BO  many 

Protestants,  owing  to  their  remarkable  skill  in  mul- 
tiplying votes.     It  is  not  for  us  in  America,  at 
to  think  Lightly  of  that  power. 

So  too,  religiously,  Liberalism  is  for  inferior  to  that 
pliant,  zealous,  many-headed,  many-handed  organiza- 
tion known  as  Protestantism,  even  to  ; 
its  oongei  i<  l&     Broken  and  ■ 

as  it  may  seem,  looked  at  intellectually,  Protestant- 
ism is  yet,  looked  at  religiously,  the  chii  force 
in  bhe  three  great  political  :  Engl  •  I  Ger- 
many, and  America,  It  has  command  of  prodigious 
wealth,  and  includes  a  large  part  of  the  wealth-pro- 
ducing skill  of  the  world.  It  has  still  a  very  large 
and  enthusiastic  body  of  adherents,  whose  zeal  it 
keeps  op  I  srous  enterpi  h  as  mis- 
sions, charities,  and  education  It  has  imm 
resources  at  its  command,  to  nurture  the  religious 
sentiment,  to  cultivate  religious  sympathies,  and  to 
inculcate  religious  belief.  Not,  certainly,  with  a  futile 
and  vain  notion  of  its  weakness,  but  with  a  distinct 
apprehension  of  its  very  great  and  still  preponder- 
ating strength,  should  we  suffer  ourselves  to  speak  of 
its  system  of  opinion  (which  we  are  so  apt  to  do)  as 
doomed  and  perishing.  It  may  be  so  ;  but  not  yet, 
not  in  our  day. 


190  THE   GOSPEL   OF   LIBERALISM. 

Of  Protestantism  as  dogma  we  take  the  less  ac- 
count, however,  since  in  the  argument  it  rests  on 
is  the  one  fatal  weakness :  it  must  appeal  to  Keason 
to  maintain  itself  against  a  claim  of  authority  far 
weightier  and  older ;  it  must  appeal  to  its  own  slen- 
der Authority  to  defend  itself  against  the  reason  it  has 
invoked.  Protestantism  as  a  life  has  been  very  great 
and  noble.  As  dogma,  it  has  been  simply  an  ex- 
pounding and  attenuating  of  the  older  creed.  For 
theology,  it  still  remands  us  to  Augustine,  Aquinas, 
or  the  Eeformers  of  the  sixteenth  century.  It  has 
gained  little  in  these  three  hundred  years,  except  the 
accumulation  of  great  stores  of  learning,  most  of  it 
valuable  only  as  material  for  the  historian  or  anti- 
quary ;  while  in  the  same  period  it  has  lost  its  mili- 
tant, heroic,  aggressive  character,  and  been  put  at 
heavy  disadvantage  in  the  fight.  It  is  never  once 
thought  of  by  sagacious  Catholics  as  a  formidable, 
hardly  even  as  a  serious,  enemy.  The  political  power 
of  Protestant  countries  they  may  very  likely  fear  and 
hate;  but  Protestantism  as  a  system  of  thought 
serves  them  only  (so  to  speak)  as  a  break-water,  pro- 
tecting them,  so  far  as  it  goes,  from  the  only  enemy 
they  do  fear,  —  namely,  Modern  Science,  and  the  un- 
belief that  comes  from  science,  against  which,  with 
pathetic  simplicity,  the  present  Pope  is  setting  up 
the  interior  pasteboard  defences  of  Scholasticism. 

Sentimentally,  Protestantism  helps  to  keep  up  the 
tradition  of  ecclesiastical  authority,  in  belief  and 
practice,  with  the  unwholesome  craving  for  it ;  and  so 
plays  fatally  into  the  hands  of  its  opponent.  Intel- 
lectually, Catholic  theologians  hold  their  Protestant 


WEAKNESS   01    PROTESTANTISM,  191 

adversaries  -justly  or  not)  simply  in  contempt,  or  at 
least  take  pains  to  make  us  think  bo.  Their  own 
learning  is  at  Least  equal  ;  their  reliance  on  authority 
is   far  more  i  .:   and  distinct.      But   behind 

Protestantism  itself  there  La  a  spirit  and  a  | 

rned  of  Protestantism,  which  they  do  fear,  —  a 
spirit  and  a  power  which  they  know  they  will  have 
v>  meet  presently , and  take  account  with,  fa 
They  understand,  as  well  as  we,  that  the  really  formi- 
dable alternative  is  not  ' Ti  itestant  or  Catholic,'*  but 
••  Reason  oi  Bonn 

There  would  be  Bometbing  ludicrous  in  the  I 
and  confident  way  we  BOmetimeS  have  in  B] 

.   them  as  Unitarians  ; 
that  is,  as  the  Bmallest  of  Protestant  a  wned 

or  ignored  by  nearly  all  the  rest    Why 
largely  and  confidently  is  ;  we  feel  oun 

consciously  allied  with  vaster  forces,  which  w< 
assured  will  have  the  heritage  of  the  future. 
sonally,  I  am  a  Unitarian,  and  hold  that  birthright 
very  dear ;  just  as  historically  1  am  a  Christiaj 

kstically  a  Protestant,  and  hold  that  birthright 

very  dear.  But,  as  students  of  opinions  and  1 
we  are  obliged  to  take  in  a  much  larger  field.  It  is 
on  that  large  field  that  we  must  watch  the  slow  un- 
folding of  human  thought  We  cannot  uf|>  hack  on 
ahway  which  the  human  mind  has  followed  in 
its  irresistible  advance.  We  cannot  unsay  the  word, 
or  undo  the  work,  which  has  reduced  not  only  these 
beliefs  and  dogmas  of  the  past,  but  the  forms  of  ex- 
perience they  grew  from,  within  the  categories  and 
methods  of  scientific  criticism.     From  that  tribunal 


192  THE  GOSPEL  OF  LIBERALISM. 

it  is  too  late  in  the  day  to  hold  any  mode  of  opinion, 
or  any  moment  of  evolution,  secluded  and  enshrined. 
Our  view  of  the  Past  must  be  swift  enough  and  broad 
enough  at  least  to  guess  what  the  coming  stage  of 
development  is  to  be. 

A  single  aspect  of  this  wide  view  is  all  that  con- 
cerns us  now.  Let  us  look  a  moment,  then,  at  the 
supplanting  of  the  received  Cosmologies  by  larger  and 
more  precise  conceptions  of  Nature  and  Life,  with 
the  resulting  effect  on  current  religious  ideas. 

Five  hundred  years  ago,  Dante's  scheme  —  of  Hell 
as  a  great  cavern  running  through  the  earth,  of  Pur- 
gatory as  a  hill  on  the  other  side,  and  of  Paradise  as 
filling  the  nine  concentric  celestial  spheres  —  was  a 
fair  enough  picture  of  the  way  the  most  highly  edu- 
cated looked  on  things  ;  a  long  advance  on  the  earlier 
notion  of  the  earth  as  a  four-square  plane,  patterned 
like  the  tabernacle  of  Scripture,  with  the  lake  of  fire 
below,  and  the  solid  crystal  vault  above.  Copernicus 
was  ten  years  older  than  Martin  Luther ;  and  his  sys- 
tem (which  Melanchthon  would  have  violently  sup- 
pressed, as  atheism)  gave  the  first,  by  far  the  rudest, 
shock  the  old  belief  has  ever  felt. 

Think  of  the  steps  that  have  been  taken  since :  — 
Galileo's  discoveries  about  the  planets,  suggesting  a 
plurality  of  inhabited  worlds ;  Kepler's  laws  of  plane- 
tary motion,  dissolving  away  the  solid  spheres  of  the 
old  astronomy ;  Newton's  theory  of  universal  gravita- 
tion, displacing  arbitrary  will  as  the  direct  cause  of 
the  celestial  motions ;  Franklin's  proof  that  lightning 
and  electricity  are  the  same,  doing  away  the  super- 
stitious awe  at  thunder-storms;    Laplace's   nebular 


sir.  LDVAXCE   IN    BCIE> 

hypothesis,  so  generally  accepted,  carrying  back  the 

origin  of  the  solar  system  to  incalculable  remoto  d 
Ualton's  demonstration  of  definite  -inns  and 

elective  affinities  in  chemistryj  making  ridiculous  the 
old  notion  of  "  dead  matter"  astheantitl  Spirit 

or  the  enemy  of  Good;  demonstration  of  the  - 
of  light  and  di  toying  nl 

Id  belief  in  a  local  h< 

the  aniformity  of  cosmic  I  I  antiquity  of  the 

globe,  disproving  absolutely  the  popular  chronology 

of  creation  ;  d  to  the 

the  sun  and  the  light  widening 

SOUsly    and    at    OH  OUT    ]»h> 

the  well-establishe  I  •  stion  and 

equivalence  of  energy,  with  its  far-reaching 
our  conception  of  the  laws   of  life;  and  now   the 
scheme  of  evolution  by  natural  pi  pparently 

destined,  with    whatever  modification,  to   rap 

and    swallow   up    every   Other    thfl  the   trans- 

mission «•{"  Life  and  tin-  inheril 
or  evil. 

Thea  ur  half  of  them  taken 

within  li vim:  memory  —  in  telly,  not  as  so 

many  advana  ;'  human  intellect,  hut 

as   they  hoar  00    Conceptions    and   ideas   which    were 
once  wrought  up  without  question  into  mi 
ions  belief,  and  were  hold  n  •  t<>  their  salvation. 

very  impressive  to  Burvey  tl.  a   in  their 

connection  and  in  their  order  of  sequence,  if  we  only 
a  moment  to  reflect  how  prodigious  is  the  men- 
tal revolution  they  imply.     To  take  one  step  the  other 
way.  to  roll  hack    by  ever  BO  little  an  arc  the  driving- 


194  THE  GOSPEL  OF  LIBERALISM. 

wheel  of  that  revolution,  is  manifestly  impossible. 
And  the  steps  have  been  coming  with  increasing  fre- 
quency and  increasing  weight. 

With  a  wise  instinct,  the  Church  —  or  the  theologi- 
cal spirit  it  had  trained — tried  to  throttle  at  the  birth 
those  twin  earth-born  giants,  Natural  Science  and 
Free  Thought.  It  burned  Giordano  Bruno.  It  silenced 
Galileo  in  the  cells  of  its  Inquisition.  It  allowed  the 
Newtonian  theory  to  be  taught  only  when  it  became 
absolutely  necessary  in  courses  of  the  higher  mathe- 
matics, and  then  only  as  hypothesis,  never  as  fact. 
It  continued  to  pray  for  rain  and  against  thunder, 
and  so  continues  to  this  day.  It  protected  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  by  frivolous  and  grotesque  inter- 
pretations, and  tries  so  to  protect  it  now.  It  insisted 
that  fossil  remains  were  manufactured  in  that  shape 
by  the  Almighty,  and  packed  into  TOCK-strata  when 
the  earth  was  built.  And  its  advance  lines  are  only 
beginning  to  fall  back  from  the  defences,  somewhat 
hastily  thrown  up,  to  resist  the  threatened  attack  of 
the  new  philosophy  of  Evolution. 

The  tendency  which  these  things  indicate,  it  is 
safest  for  us  to  accept  as  fixed  and  inevitable.  It  is 
no  part  of  our  business  to  add  to  their  momentum,  or 
to  oppose  any  feeble  check  of  our  own.  We  may  as 
well  think  of  trying  to  push  on  the  rapids  above 
Niagara ;  we  may  as  well  think  of  trying  to  stop 
them.  Our  only  concern  with  them,  as  religious 
thinkers,  is  to  see,  as  clearly  as  we  can,  how  they 
touch  or  define  for  us  the  conditions  of  religious 
thought. 

But   observe,  asrain,  that  all   this  series  of  great 


TENDENCIES    OF    LIBERALISM. 

shocks  against  the  ancient  faith  have  affected  only 
what  was  outside  and  incidental.  They  have  not 
touched  what  is  inward  and  potential  Religion  may 
yet  be  saved  whole  and  unharmed,  we  think  ;  but 
only  by  that  cordial  co-working  with  the  spirit  of  the 
time,  which  La  the  very  thing  we  mean  by  a  I 

faith.      And   what  does  this  imp! 

Liberalism  is  not  a  code  of  opinion.      It    ifl   limply 
a  habit   of  mind,  making  the  atmosphere  of 
opinion-.   What  those  opinion-  nelson  a j 

many  things.  Sometimes  they  will  be  Buch  as  to 
k.-rp  one  very  close  to  the  old  theology  and  ti 

I   in  it  ;  only,  while  theirs  is  a  d  his  is 

a  sentimental  belief.     Sometimes  they  will  be  such  as 

to  repel  him  violently  from  them,  and  put  him  in  the 
attitude  oi  rive  radicalism.     But,  in  general,  it 

is  away  from,  Dot  towards,  the  establish  1       It 

begins,  for  example,  with  criticism  of  text  or  doctrine ; 

88  "ii  with  more  and  more  searching  criticism  of 

the  Sacred  Books  themselves j  until  it  sets  seriously 

about  the  task  .which    is  that   of  the  more   advanced 
scholarship  now)  of  bringing  the  entire  record  under 
enerally  received  canons  that  apply  to  all  his- 
tories of  men  ami  all  growths  of  opinion 

Oi'  course,  it  tends  thus  to  discard  miracle  in  the 
sacred  narrative:  not  that  it  necessarily  denies  the 
facts  which  looked  miraculous  once,  but  that,  when  it 
accepts  them  (as  Dr.  Furness  does),  it  seeks  to  put  a 
natural  interpretation  on  them  ;  and  this,  while  it 
leaves  unimpaired  their  value  as  appeals  to  pious 
sentiment,  quite  destroys  their  value  as  evidences  of 
religious  dogma. 


196  THE   GOSPEL  OF   LIBERALISM. 

It  rejects,  without  hesitation  or  fear,  all  doctrines 
— such  as  election,  reprobation,  and  an  endless  hell — 
which  affront  either  reason  or  natural  justice  or  the 
character  of  the  Divine  government.  It  loves  to  re- 
cognize what  is  attractive  in  other  forms  of  religion, 

—  as  Buddhism,  Brahmanism,  and  the  rest,  —  some- 
times to  the  unjust  disparagement  of  Christianity. 
It  inclines  strongly  to  humanity,  kindliness,  natural 
charity,  as  against  set  acts  of  piety,  in  its  view  of 
human  duty.  In  its  social  theory,  it  disinclines  just 
as  strongly  to  admit  the  hard  facts  or  accept  the  hard 
conditions  of  human  life.  Its  working  plans  are  at 
once  expanded  by  a  generous  sympathy,  and  weak- 
ened by  an  amiable  sentimentalism.  Its  moral  peril 
is,  of  too  strong  recoil  from  austere  bigotry  to  indo- 
lent laxity  of  judgment.  And  it  too  easily  admits  an 
over-conceit  of  itself,  which  leads  to  spiritual  impo- 
tency,  cowardice,  and  self-indulgence. 

Away  from  this  moral  peril,  the  great  glory  and 
strength  of  Liberalism  are  in  its  cheerful,  courageous, 
confident  piety.  The  sweetest  of  hymns  and  the 
serenest  of  good  lives  have  flowed  from  it.  Passion 
and  fervor  of  the  religious  life  it  is  apt  to  lack.  That 
spirit  belongs  rather  to  a  more  stern  and  ascetic  faith. 
It  comes  from  a  sense  of  terror,  a  depth  of  contrition, 
a  gratitude  for  rescue,  which  Liberalism  cannot  feel, 
since  the  only  God  it  knows  is  a  God  of  love.  And 
it  is  weak  in  this,  that  it  does  not  recognize  —  what 
Nature  alike  and  the  deep  conviction  of  sin  declare 

—  a  God  of  terror  and  a  God  of  wrath,  as  well. 

In  the  several  forms  in  which  we  have  known  it 
hitherto,  Liberalism  has  given  to  the  world  many  of 


WEAKNESS    AND   STRENGTH   OF   LIBERALISM.      197 

the  noblest,  purest,  gently  serene,  obedient,  and  holy 
Uvea  But  of  itself,  and  intellectually  regarded,  it 
is  only  a  Step  of  transition.  It  is  very  for,  in  any 
exposition  it  has  made  of  itself  as  yet,  from  even  at- 
tempting  to  state  a  theory  of  the  Divine  government 
so  as  to  take  in  the  dark  Bide  of  it.  as  Calvinism  did. 
It  is  very  far  now  from  being  a  great  power  to  more 
the  world,  as  Calvinism  waa  It  is,  as  we  may  say, 
the  religious,  pietistic,  sentimental  aide  of  our  modern 
thought     It  -  4,  but  i  off  to  the 

harder  and  more  practical,  the  positive,  the  scientifio 

lida      And  our  best  wish  for  it  is  that  it  may  survive 

as  the  gracious,  beaming,  benignant  soul,  making 
glad,  hopeful,  and  bright  a  world  whose  glory  seemed 
threatening  to  depart 

For,  as  we  cannot  tail  to  see,  those  steps  of  mental 
revolution   which    I  have  spoken  of  ha.  oed  to 

many  grave  thinkers  the  coming  on  of  the  chill   pe- 
numbra that  betokens  before  long  a  total  ecli] 
faith.      Even   it'  it  were  SO,  the  body  that  intercepts 
the  light   is.  after  all.  a  celestial  hotly,  though  earthy 

and  opaque,  and  its  shadow  will  doubtless  presently 

pass  away. 

And  there  i>  compensation,  even  here.    We  may, 

indeed,  for  a  generation  or  two,  lose  that  near  and 
comforting  assurance  of  the  Divine  Personality  which, 

1  am  sure,  will  come  baek  to  us  in  a  glorified  form 
when  our  minds  are  grown  to  apprehend  the  condi- 
tions under  which  it  must  he  held.  As  it  has  been 
held  by  many,  and  still  is,  it  is  a  mere  idolatry  — 
sometimes  cringing  and  cowardly,  sometimes  inso- 
lently familiar —  which  we  shrink  from  as  blasphemy, 


198  THE  GOSPEL  OF  LIBERALISM. 

often,  in  the  prayers  we  hear  and  the  threats  addressed 
to  men's  religious  terror.  If  our  speculations  on  the 
Divine  Nature  fail  us,  let  us  first  think  worthily  of 
the  divine  reality  in  life.  Then,  it  may  be,  we  shall 
have  clearer  vision  of  the  Living  God,  who  is  the 
fountain  of  universal  life. 

So,  too,  it  may  be  needful  that  men  should  lose  for 
a  season  their  clear  and  vivid  conviction  of  the  Future 
Life,  —  seeing  what  evil  use  has  been  made  of  it  in  the 
craven  fears  and  selfish  hopes  that  have  constituted 
the  buttress  of  ecclesiastical  tyranny;  seeing  how 
multitudes  of  religionists  have  deliberately  sacrificed 
the  urgent  duties  and  forgotten  the  deep  wrongs  and 
griefs  of  the  life  that  now  is,  in  their  self-indulgent 
brooding  on  joys  or  terrors  of  the  life  to  come.  It 
were  better  for  us  all  to  ask  less  how  we  may  be  sure 
than  how  we  may  be  worthy  of  that  incomprehensi- 
ble and  august  destiny.  The  nobility  of  the  Hebrew 
race  began  when  it  left  behind  the  Egyptian  creed  of 
another  life,  and  entered  on  the  wilderness  of  wan- 
dering and  pain,  believing  only  in  the  present  Deity  ; 
when  it  cast  aside  the  "  Book  of  the  Dead,"  with  all 
that  solemn  ritual  and  imagery,  and  the  grave  judg- 
ments of  Osiris  beyond  the  dark  river,  and  accepted 
instead,  for  its  sole  portion,  the  Ten  Commandments, 
as  it  began  its  bleak  but  valiant  march.  From  that 
seed  grew  its  later,  better  faith  in  immortality,  and 
the  larger  life  which  is  ripening  to-day. 

If  it  is  true,  then,  —  and  I  do  not  say  that  it  is, 
though  many  will  say  it  for  me,  —  that  there  is  going 
to  be  an  eclipse,  for  longer  or  shorter,  of  those  two 
great  lights  of  faith,  one  of  two  things  will  certainly 


THE   ETHICAL  FOUNDATION.  199 

occur.  Either  our  intellectual  creed  will  drift  stead- 
ily into  that  sombre  pessimism  which  is  the  last  word 
of  a  merely  fatalistic  evolution,  while  a  practical  ma- 
terialism will  come  more  and  more  to  hold  the  field, 
in  a  godless  science,  a  rudei  scramble  fox  wealth,  a 
baser  giving  up  of  ourselves  to  sensual  delight,  a 
widening  of  the  insolent  and  crnel  distinctions  of 
rich  and  poor,  learned  and  ignorant,  with  the  ever- 
impending  danger  of  a  war  of  classes,  threatening  to 
blot  out  the  glory  and  life  of  civilization  itself, — 
that  "ii  the  one  hand;  or.  on  the  other  hand,  salva- 
tion must  be  found  where  ii  of  old, 
in  deepening  and  renewing  the  springs  of  life  in  the 
son!  itself 

And  here  we  must  bear  in  mind  that, while  nothing 
we  can  do  ox  say  or  think  can  alter  in  the  least  the 
!  \  p of  the  Divii  rnmentor  our  own  nltim 

destiny,  yet  oux  own  relation  to  that  government  or 
that  destiny  depends  wholly  on  what  we  do  and  think 
and  are.  The  lessons  of  Christian  history,  which 
make  by  fax  the  most  profound  and  instructive  chap- 
ter in  the  moral  history  of  mankind,  have  taught  us 
little,  unless  they  have  shown  how  salvation,  at  the 
hour  of  extreme  crisis,  has  always  been  found  in  one 
way,  —  that  is,  by  returning  upon  ti  '  moral 

convictums  of  the  soul. 

Not  speculation,  not  emotion,  but  Conscience  is 
the  true  foundation  of  the  higher  life.  It  has  alw,. 
begun  with  an  intense  conviction  of  Sin  and  sense  of 
personal  need,  or  else  with  an  intense  perception  of 
the  Evil  in  the  world  to  be  overcome  by  good.  It 
has  always  worked  out  in  a  new  freshness  and  vigor 


200  THE   GOSPEL   OF  LIBERALISM. 

in  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  in  a  more  living 
conception  of  practical  righteousness.  It  was  so  with 
Jesus ;  it  was  so  with  Paul ;  it  was  so  with  Augus- 
tine ;  it  was  so  with  Luther ;  it  was  so  with  those 
disciples  who  one  by  one  embraced  the  stern,  sad, 
valiant  creed  of  Calvin,  and  through  it  saved  to 
the  modern  world  most  of  what  makes  its  life  worth 
saving.  With  each  of  them,  it  was  associated  with 
doctrines,  or  forms  of  thought,  which  are  seen  now 
to  be  outgrown,  and  which  the  world  must  soon  in- 
evitably leave  behind,  —  with  false  Messianic  hopes ; 
with  crude  anthropologies ;  with  dogmatic  creeds, 
strange  and  effete  ;  with  impossible  socialistic  dreams. 
But  with  each  of  them  it  has  left  not  only  great  ex- 
amples of  personal  fidelity :  it  has  left  also  a  distinct 
lesson,  as  needful  to-day  as  then.  It  is  a  very  pitiful 
and  meagre  thing  to  have  exposed  their  error,  unless 
we  have  grasped  and  interpreted  their  truth. 

And,  finally,  what  is  that  truth,  as  it  bears  now  on 
our  thought  and  life  ? 

For  answer,  think  what  it  was  at  the  time  of  the 
decline  and  fall  of  Kome.  Then,  as  now,  there  was  a 
system  of  material  fatalism  l  coming  to  be  widely  ac- 
cepted among  cultivated  minds.  Then,  as  now,  old 
creeds  were  dissolving.  The  restraints  of  ancient 
piety  being  loosed,  whole  communities  were  plunged 
into  scepticism,  and  with  that  into  the  luxuries  and 
vices  for  which  scepticism  offers  a  cheap  and  easy 
excuse  to  self-indulgence.  Imperial  Eome  was  then 
what,  with  a  startling  likeness,  imperial  Paris  seemed 

1  Under  the  name  Manichaean. —  see  "Fragments,"  etc.,  pp. 
131-133. 


ETERNAL   RIGHTS  201 

fifteen  years  ago.  And  then  the  key  to  a  nobler  life  for 
Humanity  was  found  in  the  soul  of  one  man,1  who 
with  passionate  earnestness  sought  to  cleanse  himself 
of  hifl  persona]  share  of  guilt,  and  so  found  anew 
the  sense  of  moral  freedom,  and  the  solution  of 
life's  problem,  in  absolute  surrender  of  himself  to 
an  Almighty  Will. 

v,  whatever  else  the  course  of  thought  may 
leave  behind,  it  remains  that  every  man  of  healthy 
intelligence  knows  there  is  a  Right  and  there  is  i 
Wrong,  and  that  the  difference  between  them  m< 
area  the  highest  law  of  his  being.  The  foundations 
of  the  Onivi  far,  very  far,  beyond  our  sight; 

but  we  know  they  must  be  laid  in  equity.  There  is 
"an  Eternal,  not  ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness." 

"  II"  tli is  fail. 

The  pillared  firmament  ia  rotteno 
And  eeitl  rill  on  stubble." 

This   deepest  law   of  our  life   we   cannot    ah 
learn  by  way  of  theory.     So  much  of  it  as  concerns 
ourselves  we  learn  by  way  of  obedience.     One  may 
be  our  Theology;  the  other  is  our  Religion.     When 

the  desire  to  know  and  the  purpose  to  obey  have  taken 
full  possession  of  a  man  ;  when  they  mount  in  his 
aspiration,  and  flame  in  his  passion,  and  breathe  in 
his  piety,  and  give  their  color  to  his  thought,  and 
nerve  him  to  bis  work,  —  then  we  have  the  true  Re- 
ligion which  our  time  demands,  independent  of  all 
its  Philosophies,  and  nobler  than  all  its  Creeds. 
1  Saint  Augustine. 


APPENDIX. 


MEMORIAL  ADDRESS 

.).  cU  tJi--  Annual 
M'  i  ting  <>/  th-  Am>  rica 

Bl    Ki.v.    FbeDERK     II.    II.'  :       .    I'D. 


MR.  PRESIDENT,— We  do  well  to  «1-  rote  a  portion 
of  this  anniversary  day  of  our  Association  to  the 
memory  of  those  servants  of  our  cause  who  daring  the  past 
year,  baring  finished  their  work,  have  retired  from  our 
ranks  to  "join  the  ohoir  invisible," 

snnn  w.  bellow 

It  fulls  to  in.-  to  speak  of  Dr.  Bellows,  who,  if  less  im- 
pressive  as  a  preacher  than  the  honey-lipped  Nestor1  who 

hastened  to  follow  him  in  death,  has  had  in  all  our  annals 
no  equal  aa  a  man  of  action. 

Two  years  ago,  we  oalehrated  the  memory  of  that  illus- 
trious divine2  whom  we  regard  as  OUr  father  in  the  faith. 
To-day,  we  commemorate  the  disciple  and  brother  by  whose 
organizing  genius  that  faith  has  been  made  to  take  to  itself 
a  body  as  compact  as  our  unformulized  theology  and  the 
right  to  differ,  which  we  all  claim,  will  allow. 

1  Dr.  Dewey.  '-'  Dr.  Charming. 


204  APPENDIX. 

He  was  our  Bishop,  our  Metropolitan.  The  dignity  is 
unknown  by  name  in  our  communion :  the  office  has  no 
place  in  our  acephalous,  isocratic  polity.  But  this  once  in 
our  history,  by  this  one  man  in  our  brotherhood,  the  func- 
tion was  exercised,  and  that  by  no  robbery  but  by  univer- 
sal consent  of  the  brethren.  It  was  no  rape  of  clerical 
ambition,  but  a  lot  which  fell  to  him  by  native  gift.  He 
took  possession  of  his  see  by  supreme  right  of  natural 
leadership  and  self-evident  vocation,  —  a  see  extending 
from  the  Bay  of  Fundy  to  the  Golden  Gate.  An  ecclesi- 
astical Centurion,  "set  under  authority,"  he  said  to  this 
man,  "Go,"  and  he  went;  to  another,  "Come,"  and  he 
came.  He  ordered  us  hither  and  thither,  and  we  surren- 
dered ourselves  to  his  ordering.  One  day,  he  summoned 
us  to  New  York,  and  founded  the  National  Conference  of 
Unitarian  Churches.  Another  day,  he  summoned  us  to 
Springfield,  and  established  the  Ministers'  Institute.  These 
organizations,  which  we  trust  will  survive  him  and  last  as 
long  as  our  communion  shall  maintain  its  specialty  and 
continue  a  separate  fold  in  universal  Christendom,  testify 
of  his  far-seeing  sagacity  as  well  as  his  far-reaching  zeal. 
They  are  his  monument,  had  he  no  other.  They  are  his 
"  epistle  written  in  our  hearts,  known  and  read  of  all 
men,"  —  "  written  not  with  ink,  but  with  the  spirit  of  the 
living  God." 

St.  Paul,  enumerating  the  trials  and  triumphs  of  his 
mission,  boasts  that  he  was  "  in  journeyings  often."  Our 
Unitarian  missionary,  in  journeys  not  less  frequent,  ex- 
ceeded, if  journeys  be  estimated  according  to  their  length, 
by  many  a  meridian  the  apostolic  mark.  When  Starr  King 
died,  he  hastened  to  San  Francisco,  while  as  yet  no  rail 
had  pierced  the  Rocky  Mountains,  comforted  the  orphaned 
diocese,  with  counsel  and  ordinance  confirmed  the  church, 
and  established  a  pastor  in  the  vacant  pulpit.     This  was 


HKNKY    W.    BELLOWS. 

one  among  many  of  the  generous  impromptus  of  his  alert 
and  enterprising  spirit. 

Bia  qualifications  lor  the  office  he  assumed  were,  first  of 
all,  faith  m  the  cause  and  fervent  love  of  the  cause  he 
espoused*     With  the  heart,  and   not  with  the  undei 
ing  only,  he  believed  in  the  Liberal  gospel  of  our  Church. 
With  the  heart  he  d  .  .  and  extend  its 

beneficent  influence  in  the  land.     He  was  not  content  to 
hold  tin'  beliefs  he  cherished  as  a  prn 
trim-  by  which  1m-  had  b  ad  cheered  and 

inspired  he  burned  to  impart  to  others  for  their  enlighten- 
ment, encouragement,  and  inspiration.  He  believed  in  its 
final  triumph,  hut  not  without  adequate  efforts  d< 

t-»    that    end.        I 

should  not  )"•  wanting. 

To  these  moral  incentives  we  must  add  a  folicitou 
and  extraordinary  p  laptation    Qe  discerned  two 

hostile  ■  work  :  on  the  one  hand,  a  beadlong,  radi- 

cal  spirit  tending  to  Nihilism  ;  on  tin-  other,  a  timid, 
servative  temper  threatening  arrest  in  the  past  and  captivity 

ma  and  the  letter.  Se  set  KimaAlf  to  medial 
tween  the  two.  His  own  theological  pro  iivities  inclined 
to  the  conservative  side,  hut  his  convictions  were  not  very 
exigent  Se  could  practise  a  tolerant  frankness,  which 
by  conciliating  dissent  might  limit  the  aphelion  of  denial, 
while  it  shamed  stagnation  and  Loosened  the  hands  of 
custom. 

Be  craved  popularity,  he  needed  it  for  the  end  h< 
at  heart.     And  he  liar.     Innocent  of  duplicity, 

by  virtue  of  a  never-failing  suavity,  he  could  be  all  things 
to  all  men,  conciliating  the  self-willed,  humoring  the  weak, 
noticing  the  obscure,  acknowledging  the  claims  of  the  em- 
inent, paying  tribute  where  it  was  due,  and  collecting  it 
from  all.     Always  the  man  he  talked  with  deemed  him 


206  APPENDIX. 

his  particular  friend.  There  was  no  falsity  in  this  and 
no  hypocrisy  :  it  was  pure  affability,  the  easy  libation  of 
a  fluent  nature  and  a  brimming  cup. 

I  note  in  this  man  the  rare  combination  of  the  conse- 
crated soul  with  the  boon  companion,  the  enthusiast  with 
the  man  of  the  world.  He  was  not  one  of  those  of  whom 
it  could  be  said,  as  Wordsworth  said  of  Milton,  "His 
soul  was  as  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart."  He  was  not  one  of 
the  bloodless  hermit  saints,  who  seem  not  to  belong  to  this 
world,  attached  to  it  by  only  the  slenderest  thread  of 
animality,  whose  soul 

"  Scarce  touching  where  it  lies, 
Bat  gazing  back  upon  the  skies, 
Shines  with  a  mournful  light." 

He  was  no  ghost,  no  lank  ascetic,  but  an  honest,  whole- 
some son  of  earth,  at  home  in  the  flesh,  who  without  being 
in  the  least  a  sensualist,  not  living  by  bread  alone,  yet 
lived  by  bread  in  the  widest  sense,  —  a  boon  companion 
who  enjoyed  the  feast  and  the  jest,  could  give  as  well  as 
take  of  that  coin,  was  quick  at  repartee,  met  the  worldling 
on  his  own  ground,  and  charmed  the  table  with  the  bright- 
ness of  his  wit.  Yet  he  never  unfrocked  himself,  nor 
pained  his  friends  with  any  sense  of  incongruity  between 
his  discourse  and  his  calling.  As  in  Philip  Neri,  the  jester 
was  the  foil  of  the  priest. 

Withal,  as  I  said,  a  consecrated  soul.  If  he  shone  as  a 
man  of  the  world  in  worldly  converse,  he  had  none  the 
less  his  conversation  in  heaven.  His  supreme  aim  in  life, 
embracing  and  subordinating  all  secondary  aims,  was  in 
one  or  another  way,  by  this  or  that  ministry,  to  fix  and 
extend  the  kingdom  of  heaven  on  the  earth,  everywhere 
rooting  out  evil  and  planting  good.  For  this  and  in  this 
he  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being.     Time,  money, 


HENRY   W.   BELLOWS.  207 

and  pen  were  at  the  service  of  every  good  cause.  In  what 
charity  was  he  not  active]  In  what  philanthropic  move- 
ment did  he  not  lead  ]  As  champion  and  advocate  of  all 
the  humanities,  that  great  and  populous  city  of  his  abode 
had  no  citizen  more  honored  and  called  for,  no  voice  more 
prompt  and  commanding.  Kemember  that  shining  episode 
of  his  public  life,  the  Sanitary  Commission  !  AVho  of  us, 
brother  ministers,  his  survivors,  can  be  named  \ 
ord  contains  a  chapter  like  that,  so  replete  with  laborious, 
needful,  beneficent  servicel  Few  who  were  not  intimate 
with  <>ur  brave  brother  can  know  what  toil  and  cares,  what 
runnings  to  and  fro,  what  appeals  to  the  indifferent,  what 
wrestlings  with  officials,  what  liberal  expenditure  of  pri- 
vate meana  thai  enterprise  involved.  And  he  was  the  soul 
of  it  all.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that,  although  without 
him  it  would  doubtless  have  originated,  and  in  the  hands 
of  Olmsted  and  other  willing  and  able  coadjutors  have 
done  a  good  work,  it  could  not  without  him  have  been 
the  power  and  the  which  it  was.     We  learned 

from  his  example  that  the  age  of  chivalry  was  not  past,  as 
Lurko  complained,  when  this  new  Hospitaller  and  Knight 
of  St.  John  took  the  field  in  the  cause  of  mercy.  I  visited 
not  long  sin.-.-  the  cemetery  at  Arlington,  where  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  the  soldiers  who  (ell  in  the  war  of  the 
Rebellion  are  interred.  Afl  I  wandered  among  those 
mostly  nameless  graves,  1  reflected  that  perhaps  not  one  of 
that  mighty  host  had  perished  without  having  experienced, 
directly  or  indirectly,  some  alleviation  of  his  sufferings 
through  the  hand  of  that  great  charity  of  which  our  brother 
was  the  head. 

And  all  the  while,  through  all  the  years  of  the  war,  he 
retained  his  cure  of  All-Souls  Church,  preached  in  his 
pulpit,  and  fulfilled  the  duties  of  his  pastorate. 

I  recall    with  wonder  his  indefatigable  diligence,   hia 


208  APPENDIX. 

amazing  activity.  The  steam  was  always  up  in  that  fierce 
engine  that  was  in  the  body  of  him,  of  which  his  life  was 
the  fuel.  The  driving-wheel  was  never  still.  Even  in  his 
dreams,  I  think  he  must  have  been  at  work.  Minister  of 
a  cultivated,  intelligent,  and,  as  one  might  suppose,  ex- 
acting congregation,  he  satisfied  their  demands  with  his 
preaching ;  and  yet  preaching  was  but  a  small  part  of  his 
activity.  Often,  his  sermons  were  written  at  one  sitting. 
But  haste  was  not  apparent  in  them.  The  same  sermons 
would  have  cost  some  of  us  whole  days  in  the  preparation. 
Then,  he  found  time  for  other  writing  in  many  kinds  and 
various  interests,  literary  and  practical,  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral, and  conducted  a  correspondence  that  might  have 
taxed  the  ability  of  a  statesman.  He  never  neglected  a 
letter  due.  Indeed,  writing  was  as  natural  to  him  as 
breathing.  It  seemed  as  if  the  pen  were  a  part  of  him,  a 
supplementary  organ  which  Nature,  foreseeing  his  needs, 
had  attached  to  his  finger-joints,  and  which  could  be 
sheathed  or  unsheathed  at  will.  At  houses  where  I  have 
visited  with  him  in  his  vacations,  he  would  sit  up  late 
after  the  rest  of  us  had  retired,  and  rise  before  we  woke, 
to  write.  It  was  thus  that  he  composed  his  history  of 
the  Union  League  Club. 

You  will  say  that  with  all  this  activity,  with  this  ex- 
cessive giving  out,  there  could  be  no  time  to  take  in,  no 
time  for  study  and  reflection.  As  to  reflection,  I  cannot 
say.  Long,  deep,  silent,  patient  brooding,  I  suppose,  was 
not  in  his  nature.  But  this  I  know,  he  was  a  diligent 
reader.  Scarcely  a  book  of  special  importance  in  the 
province  of  history,  or  popular  philosophy,  or  even  fic- 
tion, was  uttered  by  the  press  but  he  somehow  found  time 
to  acquaint  himself  with  its  contents. 

The  one  talent  denied  him  was  that  of  repose.  He 
could  not  do  nothing ;  he  could  not  lie  by.     Of  leisure  he 


HENRY    W.    BELLOWS.  209 

had  no  experience,  no  relish,  scarcely  knew  what  it  meant. 
His  health  breaks  down  from  overwork  and  he  goes  abroad, 
undertakes  a  grand  tour  for  its  recovery.  But  the  tour  is 
turned  to  ii'-w  t<«il.  Half  the  night  Lb  spent  in  bringing 
to  protocol  the  observations  and  events  of  the  day.  From 
the  railway,  from  the  saddle,  from  rounds  of  sight-seeing, 
straight  to  the  ink-stand,  The  written  sheets  are  sent 
home,  are  committed  to  the  press;  and  when  the  journey 
is  ended,  behold  !  it  is  a  book.  I  say  this  not  by  way  of 
commendation,  but  of  characterization.  I  do  not  think  it 
is  the  way  to  get  the  full  benefit  ■  [tisn 

"  wi -nt  out  for  to  see."    What 

•  only  to  describe  on  th 
much  advai  ith  the  i 

To  see  well,  one  inn  r  end,  n. 

sire,  must  l.-t  one's  upon  by  the  thing  seen, 

—  must  be  one's  self  (so  to  speak)  the  Object!  and  the 
thing  seen  the  Subject 

Bu1  such  passivity  was  not  in  Bellowa's  make:  he  must 
ith  the  will,  if  at  all.      He  could  not  be  intellectually 
and  active  at  the  same   tin.  Dally  in 

the  sense  in  which 

"Tl  r  lent  his  hand 

To  the  vast  soul  that  o'er  him  plain, 

Occasionally.     II   i  s  to  apeak  :er-trait  of 

our  friend,  a  ground  principle  in  his  mental  constitution, 
not  to  mention  which  would  be  a  grave  omission.  I  am 
at  a  loss  by  what  term  to  exprosa  it.  If  I  cared  to  be 
pedantic,  I  would  say,  in  the  Greek  sense  of  the  word, 
daemonic.  I  will  call  it,  in  plain  speech,  an  extraordinary 
capacity  of  pure  inspiration.  Xo  one  has  really  heard 
Bellows,  no  one  really  knew  him,  who  has  not  heard  him 
at  his    best  on  the   platform.     He  was  not  always  at  his 

H 


210  APPENDIX. 

best,  though  never  prosy.  But  when  he  was !  We  talk 
of  extempore  speech.  In  my  experience  there  are  two 
kinds  :  one  that  is  good,  but  is  not  really  extempore ;  and 
one  that  is  extempore,  and  is  not  good.  And  there  is 
another  which  is  miraculous,  —  incomparably  better  than 
anything  the  speaker  could  have  possibly  compassed  by 
careful  preparation  or  conscious  effort. 

"  Take  no  care  how  or  what  ye  shall  speak,  for  it  shall 
be  given  you  in  that  same  hour  what  ye  shall  speak." 
One  must  be  an  exceptional  nature  for  whom  this  shall  be 
a  safe  rule.  For  ordinary  mortals  it  is  a  very  unsafe  one. 
I  have  known  but  two  preachers  in  whose  case  it  was  ap- 
proved ;  but  two  who  could  be  effectively  beside  themselves, 
who  could  trust  their  good  genius  to  bear  them  better  and 
higher  than  their  own  wit ;  but  two  whose  wings  were  di- 
vinely assured  to  them.  One  of  these  was  the  late  Father 
Taylor,  and  the  other  was  our  Brother  Bellows.  With 
other  men,  their  best  things  come  to  them  by  lonely  mus- 
ing ;  his,  in  the  torrent  and  storm  of  public  speech.  It 
was  wondrous  to  listen  to  him  in  those  exalted  moments 
when  fully  possessed  by  his  Daemon,  — 

"  Filled  with  fury,  rapt,  inspired." 

You  could  not  report  those  flashes  with  anything  like  a 
reproduction  or  justification  of  their  effect,  any  more  than 
you  could  write  the  aurora  or  stereotype  the  lightning.  It 
was  not  so  much  the  words  themselves  which  he  uttered 
as  the  spirit  which  gleamed  in  them  and  through  them 
that  thrilled  you. 

Of  the  moral  qualities  of  this  hero  of  our  homage  I  need 
not  descant  to  you.  It  might  be  safely  assumed,  did  we 
not  otherwise  know  it  from  personal  acquaintance  with 
the  man  and  his  record,  that  such  power  as  he  exercised 
and  the  influence  that  went  forth  of  him  must  have  had 


RALPH    WALDO    DCEBS  I'll 

their  source  iu  great  virtues.      Hut  it  needs  no  assumption. 
All  who  knew  him  can  testify  of  a  moral  courage  which 
quailed  at  nothing,  which  braved  all  ri-ks  and  defied  all 
consequences  ;  ■  gener  rity  which  took  no  counsel  of  - 
prudence,  and  i  ther,  richer  men  would  have 

reckoned,   his  pecuniary  ability  ;  a  tender  sympathy  with 
bich  affliction   nei  Jed   to  in   vain  ;   a 

loyalty  which  made  his  friendship  a  Uineas 

of  nature  which  m  ihine  where  he  came. 

Such  was  our  brother  in  his  lift  and  w.-rk.      V. 

claim  f.»r  him  the  vision  of  to  I  claim  for 

him  the  penetration  of  th  .  d  thinker,  dot  the 

erudition  <>f  the  deep  road  scholar,  nor  even  the  in- 

the  emancipated  critic  What  we  do  claim  for  him  is  a 
transcendent  p  n.      Be  has  left  DO 

written  w«.rd   which,   like   that   of  Planning,    has  M 

for  itself  a  wide  acceptance  and  s  long  future;  none  which 
will  worthily  represent  him  to  posterity.  But  the  spirit 
in  which  he  wrought,  is  it  oof  immortal  1    His  work, 

it  not  survive  in  its  fruit B  I  The  lesson  of  his  life,  .shall  it 
Dot  abide  with  us,  thongh  his  place  in  our  ranks  can  know 
him  no  more  i  Will  thai  place  ever  be  tided  again  by  one 
so  brave  and  strong  1    The  best  that  aid  of  any 

man  may  surely  be  said  of  him,  —  that  he  was  one  of  those 
"who  passing  through  the  valley  make  it  a  well." 

It  is  good  to  celebrate  such.  It  is  better,  SO  far  as  our 
meaner  gifts  and  feebler  will  may  suffice,  to  fallow  them. 

BALFB   WALDO   SKKB80N. 

And  now,  Mr.  President  and  Friends,  I  crave  your  in- 
dulgence for  one  more  word,  —  a  brief  word  in  memoriam 
of  another  preacher  of  our  communion,  more  recently  de- 
ceased ;  once  for  a  few  years  a  preacher  in  the  technical, 
ecclesiastical  sense,  occupying  a  pulpit  in  this  city  as  his 


212  APPENDIX. 

father  had  done  before  him;  always  a  preacher  in  the 
higher,  universal  sense.  —  a  prophet,  —  the  greatest,  I 
think,  this  country  or  this  age  has  known.  Your  thought 
will  doubtless  have  anticipated  me,  when  I  name  the  name 
of  Emerson. 

Prevented  by  accident  from  assisting  at  his  interment 
and  offering  my  tribute  with  others  at  his  bier,  I  desire  in 
this  presence  to  acknowledge  the  debt  we  owe  him  as  pro- 
moter of  the  cause  to  which  this  association  is  vowed,  — 
the  cause  of  spiritual  emancipation. 

An  emancipator  he  was  by  the  positive,  affirmative 
method,  so  much  rarer  and  more  effective  than  the  neg- 
ative, aggressive  one  adopted  by  most  reformers.  In 
the  words  of  Dr.  Holmes  :  "  Here  was  an  iconoclast 
without  a  hammer,  who  took  down  our  idols  from  their 
pedestals  so  tenderly  that  it  seemed  like  an  act  of  wor- 
ship." 

Let  me  say,  then,  that  Emerson,  in  my  judgment,  stands 
at  the  head  of  American  literature  in  two  of  its  most  im- 
portant functions  :  as  philosophical  essayist,  and  as  lyric 
poet. 

As  philosophical  essayist  he  is  marked  by  absolute  sin- 
cerity, independent  judgment,  and  the  freshness  of  original 
thought.  His  aim  is  not  to  set  forth  in  conventional 
phrase  the  prevailing  sentiment  of  his  time,  not  to  voice 
the  accepted  doctrine  of  "good  society,"  but  to  face  the 
primary  fact,  and  to  state  in  terms  of  his  own  what  "the 
brooding  soul"  has  revealed  to  him  of  the  aspects  and 
meaning  of  life.  An  original  observer  of  Nature's  plan 
and  of  human  ongoings,  he  does  not  strain  or  strive  to  see 
and  understand;  he  does  not  worry  to  detect  the  truth 
of  things,  but  trustingly  accepts  what  comes  to  the  open 
sense  and  the  waiting  mind.  "  Stand  aside  and  let  God 
think  "  —  his    own   memorable    saying  —  expresses    the 


RALPH   WALDO    KMEB80N.  213 

mental    process    by   which    he    gained    his    insight    and 
reached  his  coo 

It  was  not  lore  of  singularity,  as  hostile  critics  alleged, 
but  plain  sincerity,  that  made  his  views  and  his  writi 
unconventional,  and  that  hare  and  there  shocked  propriety 
with.-  tling  contradiction.    It  might 

tune,  but  it  was  not  hie  fault,  that  he  could  not  see  things 
as  others  saw  them.     He  mc  saw  them 

him—if     And  the  different  viei 
meaning,  the  unwonted  phrase. 

inciter  among  as  has  incurred  more  ridicule  and  en- 
countered mora  abuse  than  this,  our  joj  and  our  pride,  in 

irlier  atteranoes.      "What  will  this  babbler 
Hit  speech  was  characterized  as  "the  most  amasing 

ring  of  one  who  could  "not  pat  two  ideas 

together,"  as  sheer  "  blasphemy,"    by    tie- 
tie  •  day,  the  self-constituted  guardians  of  right  thinking 
and  g  The  angry  invectives  launched  ■'.- 

him  by  his  censors  might  grieve  one  who  pria  . 

as  another  the  good-will  of  his  kind  ;  but  they  could  not 

turn  him  from  his  orbit,  nor  bailie  his  serene  -  .: 
sion,   nor  extort  one  syllable   of  wrath   in  reply.       "Has 
Nature  covenant. -d  with  me  that  I  should  never  appear  to 
disadvantage,  never  make  a  ridiculous  figure  1"     "1  see 

not  any  road  of  perl  which  a  man  can  travel  but 

to  take  counsel  of  his  own  bosom."    With  -  timents 

as  these  he  steeled  himself  against  the  shafts  of  his 
series,  and  steered  "  right  onward." 

And  now,  what  a  change]  "Who  names  him  but  to 
praise]  He  has  created  his  own  public,  lb-  has  formed, 
as  Wordsworth  did,  the  taste  by  which  he  is  enjoyed. 
Did  ho  write  :  "  Greatness,  once  and  forever,  has  done 
with  opinion'"?  He  has  conquered  opinion.  So  truly  he 
prophesied  :  "  Let  a  man  plant  himself  indomitably  on  his 


214  APPENDIX. 

own  instincts  and  there  abide,  and  the  huge  world  will 
come  round  to  him." 

Two  streams  of  tendency  appear  in  his  Essays.  As  a 
philosopher  he  is  both  Platonist  and  Stoic  :  a  Platonist  in 
his  contemplation  of  nature ;  a  Stoic  in  his  practical  view 
of  life.  Locke  still  held  sway  when  he  began  his  career. 
The  "  Essay  on  the  Understanding "  was  the  text-book  of 
philosophy  in  his  academic  years ;  but  the  whole  being  of 
the  youth  inclined  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  though 
not  directly  and  at  first  hand  conversant  "with  the  new 
German  philosophy,  he  welcomed  the  first  breathings  of 
its  spirit,  which  saluted  him  through  Coleridge,  and  he 
found  the  fundamental  principles  of  "  transcendentalism  " 
in  his  own  mind.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  in  relation  to 
the  conduct  of  life,  as  the  "  Meditations "  of  Antoninus 
were  the  favorite  study  of  his  youth,  so  he  echoes  and 
reproduces  that  imperial  strain  in  his  ethic.  What  more 
Antoninian  than  this  :  "To  find  the  journey's  end  in  every 
step  of  the  road,  to  live  the  greatest  number  of  good  hours, 
is  wisdom.  .  .  .  Let  us  be  poised  and  wise  and  our  own 
to-day.  I  settle  myself  ever  firmer  in  the  creed  that  we 
should  not  postpone  and  refer  and  wish,  but  do  broad 
justice  where  we  are." 

A  Stoic  he  is  in  the  emphasis  with  which  he  affirms 
Right  to  be  the  absolute  good,  —  right  for  its  own  sake, 
not  for  any  foreign  benefit.  "  There  is  no  tax  on  the  good 
of  virtue,  for  that  is  the  incoming  of  God  himself,  or  abso- 
lute existence  without  any  comparative."  "  In  a  virtuous 
action  I  properly  am" 

And  what  a  triumphant  optimism  in  his  view  of  human 
nature!  "Nothing  shall  warp  me  from  the  belief  that 
every  man  is  a  lover  of  truth.  There  is  no  pure  lie,  no 
pure  malignity  in  Nature.  The  entertainment  of  the  pro- 
position of  depravity  is  the  last  profligacy  and  profanation. 


RALPH    WALDO   EMEBSOH.  215 

Could  it  be  received  into  the  common  belief,  suicide  would 
unpeople  the  planet." 

No  writer  is  so  quotable.     Scarcely  a  page,  especially  of 
the  earlier  it   supplies  some  terse  and   pregnant 

saying,  worthy  to  be  Inscribed  in  a  golden  treasury  of 
portable  wisdom-  And  this  is  the  signal  merit  of  hie  phi- 
losophy; it  gi\  raits  i r i -t « ;i.  1  of  ]  sharp 
statements  of  weighty  truths  instead  of  long  disquisitions. 
On.-  pungent  Baying,  one  compact  axiom  that  pi 
is  better  than  pages  of  laborious  demonstration.  Demon- 
strations «  md  witty  we  remem- 
ber j  they  score  themselves  in  the  brain.  state- 
ment, the  surprise  of  fitness,  the  hitting  of  the  nail  on  the 
head,  u  of  Emerson's  writing  the  Distinguishing  trail  N  o 
mora]  teacher  has  been  so  instructiTe  to  his  generation. 

I  place  Emerson  at  the  head  of  the  lyric  |  Amer- 

ica.    In  this  judgment  I  anticipate  wide  dissent ;  but  the 
dissent,  1  think,  will  be  less  when  I  explain  t!. 
which  the  affirmation  is  intended     1  do  not  mean  that 
Mr.  Emerson  excels  his  competitors  in]  On  the 

contrary,  the  want  of  art  in  his  poetry  may  once  for  all  he 

oonceded.    The  ?erees  often  halt,  the  conclusion  sometimes 

and  metrical  propriety  is  recklessly  violated.     But 

the  defect  is  closely  connected  with  the  characteristic  merit 

of  the  i t,  and  springs  from  the  same  root, — his  utter 

spontaneity.     Ami  this  spontaneity  is  perhaps  but  a  mode 

of  that  sincerity  which  I  have  noted  in  his  prose.  BCors 
than  those  of  any  of  his  contemporaries,  his  poems  for  tie- 
most  part  are  inspirations.  They  are  not  made,  hut  given  : 
they  come  of  themselves.  They  are  not  meditated,  but 
burst  from  the  soul  with  an  irrepressible  necessity  of  utter- 
ance,—  sometimes  with  a  rush  which  defies  the  shaping 
intellect. 

The   inspiration    is   not    always    continuous   or   equal 


216  APPENDIX. 

throughout ;  often  the  beginning  of  the  poem  is  better 
than  what  follows.  It  seems  as  if  it  were  not  the  man 
himself  that  speaks,  but  a  power  behind,  —  call  it  Daemon 
or  Muse.  Where  the  Muse  flags  it  is  her  fault,  not  his ; 
he  is  not  going  to  help  her  out  with  wilful  elaboration  or 
emendation.  There  is  no  trace,  as  in  most  poetry,  of 
joiner-work,  and  no  mark  of  the  file. 

Wholly  unique,  and  transcending  all  contemporary  verse 
in  grandeur  of  style,  is  the  piece  entitled  "  The  Problem." 
When  first  it  appeared  in  the  Dial,  forty  years  ago,  come 
July,  I  said :  "  There  has  been  nothing  done  in  English 
rhyme  like  this  since  Milton."  All  between  it  and  Milton 
seemed  tame  in  comparison.  Some  of  its  verses  have  been 
found  worthy  of  a  place  in  Westminster  Abbey,  the  spirit 
of  whose  architecture  and  that  of  kindred  temples  they  so 
fitly  express. 

What  was  said  of  Emerson's  prose  is  equally  true  of  his 
poetry ;  it  is  eminently  quotable.  More  than  those  of  any 
other  poet  of  our  time  his  lines  establish  themselves  in  the 
memory. 

His  life  is  a  measure  of  the  liberty  wherewith  he  has 
made  us  free.  If  forty  years  ago  one  had  ventured  to 
commend  him  to  this  Association,  he  would  have  pro- 
nounced his  own  doom  of  ecclesiastical  ostracism.  Forty 
years  ago  he  was  a  heretic,  a  blasphemer,  a  pest  and  peril 
to  Church  and  State.  To-day  he  is  acknowledged  a  pro- 
phet, and  those  who  reviled  him  are  ready  to  garnish  his 
sepulchre.  Thus  he  verified  his  own  words :  "  Patience 
and  patience  and  patience,  and  we  shall  win  at  last." 

As  a  preacher  born  and  nurtured  in  our  communion,  he 
belongs  to  us ;  and  I  have  to  say  of  him  that,  as  a  preacher, 
he  was  one  of  the  few  in  all  the  ages  who  in  the  realm  of 
spirit  have  spoken  with  authority,  —  authority  in  the  high 
sense  in  which  the  supreme  Teacher  from  whom  our  Chris- 


RALPH   WALDO    EMERSON*.  217 

tendom  dates  was  said  to  speak  "  as  one  having  authority, 
and  not  as  the  scribes.*  There  is  an  authority  to  which 
the  many  bow,  —  the  authority  of  place,  of  other,  the  au- 
thority of  tradition,  of  t:.  .  ithority  of  th 
B  -  the  authority  of  an  original,  independent  witness. 
"I  am  an  inquirer  with  no  peat  behind  mi ."     b 

most  men  see  only  through  : 

—  a  vision  unt  lent,  unbiassed  by  tradi- 

tion, uncontrolled  by  th*-  will,  onbribed  by  inter   I 

Such  vision  v  •  him  through  that 

unconditional  surrender  to  the  spirit  • 
in_\  ••  >t  tnd  aside,  and  let  God  thins 

To  sec  thai  P  re   priv:!  .■  saw 

dling  and  prophet  mission     II  v  only 

what  he  saw,  only  what    lie    found    the  warrant    fol   in   his 

own  vision  and  experience. 

and  saying,  —  this  is  testimony  which  we  mu 

["his    is    authority.       II  |    with 

.1  "There!  e  I  into  the  world,  that  I  .>hould 

bear  witxu  —  of  the  truth." 

The  sect  of   Pliends  have  a  phrase,  —  "to  live   near  tho 

truth."  Such  living  is  more  common  with  people  of  low 
unknown  to  fame  than  it  is  with  men  of  puhlie  note. 
Of  all  distinguished  men  I  have  known,  Emerson  was  the 
on--  who  lived  nearest  the  truth.  He  was  truth's  next 
neighbor,   and  then  a.     In  my  life- 

long  converse  with  him,  I  could  detect  nothing  between 
him  and  the  truth, — not  only  no  hy]  I  pretence, 

but  no  wilfulness,  no  vanity,  no  art  to  win  applause,  no 
ambition  even  — 

"  That  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds." 
He  was  not  covetous  ><{  Bpeecb,     He  had  no  hankering 


218  APPENDIX. 

for  the  ears  of  men.  He  did  not  go  about  seeking  oppor- 
tunities of  speech,  as  some  who  are  reckoned  philosophers 
use.  If  he  could  hold  his  peace,  he  chose  it  rather.  To 
be,  not  seem,  was  his  intent. 

When  his  house  was  burned,  friends  who  had  long 
waited  a  fit  opportunity,  under  pretext  of  rebuilding  it, 
sent  him  a  large  donation  of  money.  In  his  letter  of  ac- 
knowledgment he  wrote  :  "  The  salvages  are  greater  than 
the  damage."  As  I  have  looked  upon  him  in  these  last 
years,  when  his  power  of  communication  was  impaired  by 
a  troublesome  aphasia,  and  have  seen  in  his  face  the  old 
serenity,  the  old  dignity,  and  more  than  the  old  sweetness, 
it  has  seemed  to  me  that  the  salvage  was  greater  than  the 
loss.  A  loss  which  he  felt  most  keenly,  but  bore  how 
patiently ! 

To  be,  not  seem,  is  the  lesson  of  his  life.  So  living,  he 
has  lived  down  censure,  has  lived  down  ridicule,  has  lived 
down  slander,  oppugnance  of  the  worthy  and  the  unworthy, 
and  is  now  accepted  by  us  all  as  our  best  preacher  of  true 
manliness,  of  patience,  of  sincerity,  of  faith,  of  moral  free- 
dom and  independence,  of  "whatsoever  things  are  true, 
whatsoever  things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things  are  just, 
whatsoever  things  are  pure,  lovely,  and  of  good  report." 

"  He  spoke,  and  words  more  soft  than  rain 
Brought  the  age  of  gold  again. 
His  action  won  such  reverence  sweet 
As  hid  all  measure  of  the  feat." 


INDEX    OF    PEBSONS. 


.. 

./,  Louis,  157. 

Alcott,  a.  l; 
Allen,  Joseph,  88,  84. 
Andrew,  .1.  A., 
Bancroft,  Aaron, 
BertoL.  I 

I     <  ..  127. 
Bellows,  II.  N\ .  14,  -17. 

11 1.  115,  -11. 

Birney,  J.  <;..  61. 
Bismarck,  158,  187. 
Boyle,  Robert, 
Bradford,  0.  P., 
Brownson,  < ».  A  . 

Buuhner,  1 1 
Bnckminnter,  .1.  I 
Burke,  Edmund,  18,  14.  l 
BuahneU,  Horace,  181. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  7".  162. 
Carpenter,  W.  I'.  . 

Channing,   W.   I   .  22,  ':7.   42, 

102,  152,  - 

Clarke.  .1.  F.,  69,  141. 
Clay,  Henry,  01.  100. 


-       .      . 
Comfc .  156. 

.  102. 

:.    Wllli.il! 

Dalton,  " 

Dam  in,  ,127. 

.  .  27,  110,  S 
Dickei 
Lhright,  .'.  - 

. 
71.  121,  211-S 

■    :   Iward,  20, 
I 
I 

Franklin,  I 

Frothingham,  < ».  I'..  I 
Fuller,  s.  V, 
Furneea,  W.  II..  68,  141. 

Cum. 

Gannett,  W 

Greenwood,  F.  \v.  P.,  4_». 

.  inn.  i ;-•■».  ' 
Hdge,  F.   H.,  22,  28,  M 

14--'.  Appendix. 


220 


INDEX   OF   PERSONS. 


Helmholtz,  155. 

Hollis,  Thomas,  36. 

Hopkins,  Samuel,  45. 

Howard,  1«35. 

Hume,  126. 

Huxley,  127. 

Jofferson,  Thomas,  12. 

Kepler,  192. 

King,  T.  Starr,  28. 

Laplace,  192. 

Lardner,  N.,  12,  126. 

Lawrence,  A.,  25. 

Leo  XIII.,  170. 

Leroux,  87. 

Locke,  9,  146. 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  30. 

Lovejoy,  E.  P.,  60. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  71. 

Luther,  192. 

Martineau,  James,  21,  24,  143, 

157,  181. 
May,  S.  J.,  84. 
Melancthou,  192. 
Mill,  J.  S„  162. 
Milton,  9,  55,  79,  109,  171,  178. 
Morse,  Jedediah,  35. 
Newton,  Isaac,  9,  192. 
Newton,  John,  53. 
Norton,   Andrews,   24,    28,    6S, 

126. 
Noyes,  G.  R.,  28,  68. 
Paine,  Thomas,  15. 
Paley,  William,  13. 
Palfrey,  J.  G.,  28. 


Parker,  Theodore,  22,  24,  28, 
44,  64,  70,  72,  74-78,  80, 
85,  90-113,  120,  125,  126, 
127. 

Peabody,  Ephraim,  28,  42. 

Peabody,  E.  P.,  69. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  60. 

Pierpont,  John,  28,  64. 

Price,  Richard,  14. 

Priestley,  Joseph,  14,  16. 

Putnam,  George,  27,  69. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  29,  41. 

Ren  an,  E.,  162. 

Rice,  Asaph,  38. 

Ripley,  George,  69,  70. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  147. 

Schleiermaeher,  127. 

Sears,  E.  H.,  141. 

Shaw,  Lemuel,  29. 

Socinus,  F.,  7. 

Spencer,  H.,  127,  163,  182. 

Spinoza,  159. 

Stetson,  Caleb,  69. 

Strauss,  127,  162. 

Sumner,  Charles,  29,  80. 

Tuckerman,  Joseph,  59. 

Tyndall,  John,  127,  156,  157 

Voltaire,  147. 

Walker,  James,  28,  141. 

Ware,  Henry,  27,  36. 

Ware,  Henry,  Jr.,  68. 

Webster,  Daniel,  110. 

Weiss,  John,  91,  97. 

Whitefield,  39. 


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CHRISTIAN     HISTORY 

IN   ITS   THREE   GREAT   PERIODS. 

By  JOSEPH    HENRY  ALLEN, 

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